Philately may seem a gentle avocation, but Postmaster General Larry O'Brien knows better. After he approved a 5¢ stamp to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau's birth, furious collectors complained that the Post Office Department was making the Walden Ponderer look like a thug, a Communist, a hippie or "a beatnik suffering from withdrawal symptoms." One fan even threatened civil disobedience. "If you bring a blown-up poster of this hideous thing into Concord, Mass.," he wrote, "you'd better send along a contingent of the National Guard." Fortunately no one had to call out the troops last week when...
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