Sorry, Bob. That was meant as a thank you for informing us. Sorry I sounded annoyed; I am. I try to keep on top of all the crazy news that is happening, but this one somehow slipped by me. I was left a little speechless when I googled and read up on it. I collected postage stamps as a kid and they still have a special place in my heart even though I don’t actively collect them these days. I was always proud of the fact that the UPU was one of those rare international treaties/organizations that worked throughout the world and was uniformly approved of for the task it took care of, and that we could send letters and postcards (and seeds!) to and from friends all over the world without any postal problems at all. (Another one is the ICAO which is what makes it such that we can all fly around the world to see each other and each other’s countries and bulbous flowers without a hitch and using common standards everywhere airplanes fly. Also another organization that every country in the world belongs to.) No one knows for certain how the U.S. will send and receive mail from other countries if they go through with this. The U.S. has been in the UPU since its inception and in fact the U.S. was the main instigator of setting it up way back when. I read almost as many predictions about what will happen as the number of articles I read—everything from nothing will change at all to the whole international system will fall apart since apparently the U.S. is the major backbone of the current system, and it will become much more expensive to mail things (like seeds!) around the world especially for Americans. So far I haven’t seen anyone suggest it will go back to the pre-UPU method where you had to put the local postage on the envelope for each country the letter would pass through on its route from origin to destination. Along with using my seed import permit consistently, I guess I should place all orders for seeds from abroad before January 1st that I intend to get for the next 1.5 or 5.5 years. ;-) Thanks for the warning, Bob. --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m > On Sep 11, 2019, at 5:56 PM, penstemon <penstemon@q.com> wrote: > > Bob Nold, did you really have to make us aware of this possibility? 🙂 I literally had no idea this was a thing. When I read your sentence, I thought it was a joke. The UPU is old; it’s been around forever. > > If I knew, and people who never received seeds or bulbs from overseas learned that I knew and never said anything, I’d be in trouble. > So consider this a public service message. > > https://ipma.org/update-on-the-status-of-upu-discu… > > > Bob > _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…