Attendees are encouraged to gather at the show entrance by 11:45 A.M.
for a pre-meeting lunch. The meeting will include a show-and-tell of 
postcards of Ireland. Please bring your favorites to share.

The Commodore John Barry chapter serves EPA members residing in the 
New York-New Jersey region and holds meetings four times a year. It's
an active group with members also active in national EPA affairs. The 
chapter supports school stamp programs both in the States and in Ireland. 
Auctions held at meetings have run the gamut from rather ordinary common 
lots to quite extrensive and unusual.

Area EPA members are encouraged to attend and join the chapter. Any
collectors visiting the NY-NJ area are welcome as well.

As announced at Stampa, a new Integrated Mail Processor (IMP) has been
introduced at the Dublin Mail Centre. First day of operational use was 9
November. Use is somewhat experimental at this stage and seemingly
infrequent as phosphor stamps are neded for full operation.

The IMP is similar to equipment elsewhere incl UK and will automatically
sort out large items for manual sorting from small envelopes. It will then
face up the envelopes by picking out the stamp (by ref. to the phosphor)
and cancel same with a new inkjet postmark similar to that used in Britain.

Two slogans have been seen to date - INTERNET (which is new) and the 
ALONE slogan. The quality is better but still does not match Swiss/French
quality. I cannot attach an illustration but they are easily recognisable
as the dater element includes a reference number and overall they are
larger. Early use will be rare. Further details from John Lennon are set
out below. 

The already established OCR machinery which puts a binary code series of
lines on the back of the envelope is also part of the process. Members in
USA will be familiar with them. The two are linked - see below.

From John Lennon who has only studied day 1 mail of ESB to date

There are three original OCR machines (2 from day 1 of DMC, 1 added later)
with numbers 3889, 3990 and 3991.

There are two new machines (unless they have changed numbers) which have
now appeared in relation to envelopes with the new IMP slogans - 3992
(machine 1) and 3993 (machine 2).

The number within the slogan town/dater element mirrors the OCR indent (in
binary) on the back as follows:-

First digit (1 or 2) indicates machine 3992 and 3993 respectively - the OCR 
indent has the full number; next two digits is the time in half-hours beginning 
with 0 for midnight thro to 47; next 5 digits is the item number within the half-hour 
segment for that machine.

As a reminder re. OCR indent it is the MISSING spaces that are the relevant
numbers 1,2,4,8,16,32. reading from left to right and ignoring the dividers.

Use on day 1:

It appears that machine 2 was put into use for 3/4 hr t mid day with the
ALONE slogan. They appear to have stopped (for lunch ?) and later in the
day (time ??) started up again with INTERNET slogan - hence ALONE is
scarce.

Machine 1 introduced at 8 p.m. with Internet slogan.

per John highest number seen is just over 8,000 suggesting speeds of 16,000
per hour.

From examination of my own office mail only other date seen was 16th and I
think the 10th is known.

PHOSPHOR STAMPS

Linked in with the above 6 new definitive sheet stamps with a yellow
phosphor box were issued today 17 November. Values are 0p, 32p, 35p, 40p,
45p, 50p. They are printed by WALSALL (not ISSP). Later printings will be
by ISSP (in 1999 ?) and presumably all values will be issued with phosphor
in due course. ISSP to print phosphor booklet in new year. First ISSP
phosphor printing willprobably be 199 Love stamps.

In addition there is a box of self adhesives by SNP with the usual 2 x 30p
designs with phosphor. But no ISSP (As yet).

The Christmas stamps were also issued today but the ord sheet stamps are
non phosphor. However the 20 stamp booklet of 30p stamps which is SNP
printed (a first) is phosphor.

So keep your eyes open on mail from Ireland. Mail with both phos stamps and
IMP postmark will be scarce until the Christmas booklets and sheet
definitives with phosphor are in widespread circulation. Modern postal
history in the making.

First day Ceremony, Joint Issue of the Irish Immigration Commemorative 

Joe Foley, Peter Bugg and myself attended the above ceremony last Friday,
February 26, at the JFK Library in Boston. It was a truly memorable affair. 
His Eminence Bernard Cardinal Law gave the invocation and got the message 
across on the hardships endured by the Irish immigrants who emigrated to this 
country during the great famine in Ireland. It was well noted by all of the 
speakers of the contribution that the Irish made to our country in all walks of 
life. Unfortunately, Senators Kennedy and Kerry, along with William Henderson, 
Postmaster General, were unable to attend due to the snowstorm we had in 
Boston. Joe and I drove through the storm on Thursday afternoon and Peter 
and Jane Bugg provided shelter and great craic for the wekend.

The Honorable Stephen O'Connor, Chairman of AnPost, unveiled the Irish 
commemorative in this joint issue. It was with a great sense of pride to know 
that the efforts of the EPA along with the Ancient Order of Hibernians and many 
other Irish-American organizations that our quest for this issue came to a 
favorable closure. I ask everyone to please use this stamp on all of your 
correspondence.

The author states that no examples of the UP stamps have been recorded and 
to quote ' .... probably due to the fact that there would be very little, if any, mail 
requiring cancelling on the short trip between Limerick Junction and Limerick' .

An example (and I make no apologies for the lack of quality) of an UP postmark 
for 12th April 1915 has now been found and is attached.

The motto, as ever, is to check your postmarks thoroughly. This came from a page 
of Limerick postmarks I had bought some years ago and only came to light when I 
was looking to see if I had an example of the Limerick NPB (NewsPaper Branch). 
These too are scarce! 

Best wishes
Stan Challis
Guernsey
 

The PNSE will be held on October 1 - 3, 1999 at a new venue, the Fort Washington 
Expo Center. The EPA's Annual General Meeting promises a gala weekend of Celtic 
Philatelic celebration, presided over by none other than the president himself!

For information on the PNSE contact the show committee at Box 358, Broomall, PA 
19008-0358. Information on the EPA's AGM may be obtained from David J. Brennan, 
Box 704, Bernardsville, NJ 07924-0704 (e-mail: brennan704@aol.com).

Join the group and have a grand time!