Awhile back I was praising the US Postal Service on this blog for commemorating the late Maya Angelou with a “forever” stamp. Ms. Angelou was a huge influence on my early writing and I truly admired what I know of her personal history.
But the USPS screwed the pooch on this one, in case you haven’t heard. The task was straightforward: combine a picture of Ms. Angelou with one of her more memorable verses. And this is Maya Angelou we are talking about here, a woman who had hundreds of quotables during her lifetime. She was literally a walking quotable. Instead, they coupled her image with text written by Joan Walsh Anglund, a well-known children’s book author.
Takeaway: If you are going to do a tribute for someone, do all you can to make sure that you do it right. That is all.