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Pandemic519to send them a self-addressed stamped envelope, have it cancelled in Chicken on a specific date (August 7), then have it mailed it back to us. They said they would he glad to comply. When the envelope arrived back here, Lynn scrutinized it carefully, then quickly realized there was a note inside. It read, %u201cThere is a special gift for you in the drawer under the darkroom enlarger.%u201d Needless to say, after unwrapping her present, she was quite pleased. In fact, she expanded the collection of First Day Covers to include vintage covers we found online from that small Post Office in Chicken, Alaska. Plus old business envelopes and stationery featuring interesting images of chickens, postage stamps (and labels) from around the world with chickens on them, as well as vintage postcards and photographs of chickens.My own postcard and cover collections continued to expand into multiple albums. Plus I began collecting in a few new areas. Because I was particularly fond of my Balloon Jupiter First Day Covers, I started a separate collection of stamps from around the world that depicted balloons and Zeppelins. It ended up with over 500 stamps, many of which featured lighter-than-air craft from the early days of flight. The year 1983 was a particularly good one for balloon stamps because it was the 100th anniversary of the first manned flight by France%u2019s Montgolfier brothers. Their hot-air balloon floated for about 9 kilometers, until burning embers began scorching the balloon%u2019s fabric, and it had to be brought down.I began another new collection after learning the United States had planned to release a stamp in 1995 depicting one of the atomic blasts that ended WWII. After complaints by the public and Japanese officials, the Clinton administration decided not to issue the stamp. As a result, several individuals created their own pseudo stamps (called poster stamps by philatelists) in protest. Each featured their version of how the bomb stamp should have looked, and most were created in more than one variation. I started collecting them, along with actual postage stamps from other countries that did depict nuclear blasts. Because so many other nations had no qualms about issuing such stamps, I found more than 100 of them with images of nuclear explosions. To which I added vintage postcards of explosions, or cards showing important locations from the