Forever Stamp

In Thursday's post, I wrote about the coffee moving through the Port of Houston.  They do move a lot of coffee through the port, and a lot of cars, but by far the largest amount of freight is petroleum in one form or another.  Now that connection between the port and the petrochemical industry is being immortalized on a postage stamp.

Ten years ago, aerial photographer Jim Wark was flying his plane near the Houston Ship Channel and snapped a shot of a pair of tugboats "wrangling" two enormous liquid tank barges.

This month, the image he captured above the Old River Barge Fleeting area, near the intersection of the Ship Channel and the San Jacinto River, was released on a U.S. postage stamp. It's the first time, a postal official said, that a Houston landmark has attained that distinction.

"We're very pleased that the U.S. Postal Service recognized the barging industry on one of their stamps, particularly given its importance to our national transportation system," said Joe Pyne, chairman and CEO of Kirby Corp., which owns one of the two tugboats featured on the stamp.

The new stamp is part of a series called Earthscapes - released this week in conjunction with the beginning of National Stamp Collecting Month - is the latest series of Forever stamps, which can be used indefinitely for first-class mail at the 1-ounce rate.

"The stamps provide a view of the nation's diverse landscapes in a whole new way - from several hundred feet in the sky to several hundred miles in space," according to the Postal Service.

You can see the rest of the stamps in the series HERE.