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For broadcast on CBS Radio Network stations January 29-30, 2005:

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The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries. 

In the U-S, a person has to be dead 10 years before being honored on a stamp. Other 
countries don't have that rule.

Canada, for instance, is honoring six professional hockey players. All six are expected 
to attend the ceremony.

But a decade allows time for perspective...to evaluate the person's accomplishments, 
and, perhaps, discover any skeletons in the closet.

But there's another reason for not honoring a living person on a stamp. What if he or 
she says "no thanks?"

That's what happened in Austria, where Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek 
<el-FREE-deh YEH-lih-nek> told postal officials she was uncomfortable with the 
idea of her face on a stamp. She also didn't attend the Nobel ceremonies.

The reclusive novelist's best-known work is The Piano Teacher, which became a movie a 
few years ago.

What's strange is that the Austrian postal service had already created a design for 
the stamp....and released it to the public. You'd think they would have asked first.

And that's Stamp Collecting this week. 

I'm Lloyd de Vries, CBS News. 

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