US Post Office ~ Darned If They Do...

I’m trying to muster up some nostalgia for the US Postal Service.  It’s not dead yet, but it is staggering around, clutching its chest.  The handwriting is on the cyber wall:  The check’s not in the mail. 

Depending on who you talk to, the US Postal Service lost as much as $7 billion dollars this year.  Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says they can’t wait around to take corrective action, though one wonders if the loss was sudden, or if he just now noticed that $7 billion slipped through the PO’s fingers.   

Its decline has been steep in recent years.  The USPS reported delivering 216 billion pieces of mail in 2006, and only 177 billion pieces in 2010.  Sounds about right:  I get almost half my junk mail electronically now.  What with e-banking and e-shopping, e-soliciting and e-advertising, the need for hard copies of almost everything has plummeted.  That saves plenty o’ reams o’ paper.   

The cost cutting measures under consideration at USPS include closing some 3700 post offices and half its processing centers around the country.  We’re warned that these closures will result in slower delivery of letters.  I don’t think this is going to bother me too much.  Ever since I switched to on-line streaming with Netflix, I’ve quit looking for the speedy turnaround of hard copy mail.  In fact, it kind of creeped me out when that distinctive red envelop reappeared in my mailbox even if I’d only turned my head to sneeze. 

And let’s say delivery of letters goes from one day to two or three days, it’s still pretty impressive.  What a bargain, for one thing.  I’ve written a letter to my girlfriend in North Carolina.  Will you pick it up at my house Monday, please, and drop it into her mailbox on the east coast on Wednesday?  Oh and here’s 45cents for your trouble.   

Reports are that the PO could wipe out its entire $14 billion deficit by raising first class rates to 63cents per ounce.  Whoa, you might say.  Another 15cents, just like that?  No way.  But consider mailing across country at FedEx’s $8.66 for one-day service, or UPS 2-day air service at $19.72. 

What’s more, the Post Office is an icon of mainstream living in the United States.  When I was a kid, I saved up my box tops and sent away in the mail for a Detective Dick Tracy decoder ring.  The “sending away” constituted a mystery in itself since I couldn’t comprehend what General Mills was and the 6 weeks return time comprised half the summer.  But even if the ring itself remains a letdown parallel to sugar-free chocolate, its delivery by mail was magic. 

As a supplement to the book mobile my mom subscribed me to the Weekly Reader delivered by US mail.  The miracle of having grown-up mail arrive with my own little girl name on it thrilled me.  

The USPS made possible my childhood membership in the Audubon Society.  Full color glossy pictures of exotic birds made me a nerd before I understood the implications.  Thanks Mom.  No, I mean it, thanks.  Birds still provide elegance and fascination. 

The US mail afforded an early sense of adulthood:  My first gas and electric bill – not exactly ecstasy, but a validation.  Kind of like that first book of pre-printed checks.  I have a bank account.  So I must have money.  I have bills, therefore I am. 

Of course the "yippee!" drained out of that scenario in short order.   

In 2011, I maintain hand-written correspondence with the 95-year-old mother of a friend of mine, and with my husband’s second cousin in Scotland.  It’s a lovely, sort of Victorian sensation, quaint, almost genteel, to discover their letters in the box.  Sure, sometimes I think it might be nice to trade emails with them.  But if something were to happen to either of them, I won’t be holding my HP touchscreen monitor to conjure up their memories. 

If the Postal Service closes its doors, I’ll miss my mailman, er, letter carrier.  We’ve gotten acquainted since I retired.  He’s a nice man.  It’s impressive how much he knows about our town’s history by virtue of his years crisscrossing the neighborhoods.

These reminiscences are premature, of course.  Since Congress has to approve any recuperative actions before they’re implemented, it’s unlikely we’ll see any change at all in our lifetimes.  But inaction creates a catch-22:  no cost cutting leads to bankruptcy, and full circle back to nostalgia.  

Oh, the irony.   

To Breathe or Not to Breathe

Exhaust fumes kill brain cells! 

It’s not as if we didn’t know.  Or that we somehow felt OK about sucking in diesel vapors and billows of petroleum rich emissions while we sat stacked up at the toll plaza with James Taylor on the airwaves.  Damn!  This traffic jam! 

But now, the Wall Street Journal reports that commuters in high traffic corridors are spending record amounts of time inhaling tailpipe gases.  In fact, drivers traveling the 10-worst U.S. traffic corridors each year spend an average of 140 hours breathing in and out behind the wheel, idling in traffic.  That’s a month’s worth of grey matter, up in smoke.   

And it’s not just 'rush-hour' congestion anymore, what with midday and overnight traffic jams accounting for almost 40% of total delays.  The wait in line for an average commuter rose to 34 hours in 2010.  In the 15 largest urban areas, commuters wasted 52 hours every year, each burning 25 extra gallons of gasoline.   

Researchers suspect that the tailpipe exhaust from cars and trucks—especially tiny carbon particles already implicated in heart disease, cancer and respiratory ailments—may also injure brain cells and synapses key to learning and memory. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any synapses or cells to spare. 

And guess what?  The Washington, D.C., area had the most wasted hours for commuters last year, the most exhaust fumes taken in, the greatest number of brain cells compromised and the maximum number of synapses snapped. 

It all adds up, doesn’t it?   

Rick Perry can’t remember the government agencies he’d scrap if elected president:  Let’s see…Education, Commerce, and…doh!   

Herman Cain has “so many things twirling around in his brain” that Libya doesn’t sound familiar.   

Perry said, “Oops;” Cain swatted gnats.  They could have blamed their campaign dampening brain freezes on traffic in the beltway!  After all, these new public-health studies and laboratory experiments suggest that traffic fumes exact a measurable toll on mental capacity, intelligence and emotional stability.   

Congressional gridlock may be due to rush hour gridlock!   

Oh, right.  Perry and Cain aren’t in Washington.  Traffic must be horrible on the campaign trail. 

Remember the research that cautioned us against buying a car built on a Monday?  The hangover effect:  Assembly line workers needed a full workday to recover from their weekend.  The cars they put together on Mondays manifested problems reflecting their diminished mental capacities, maybe the residual effects of too many brews. 

This new research could be extrapolated to conclude that bills passing Congress on Tuesdays may be similarly suspect:  Tuesday is the busiest morning peak period for traffic backups and fume inspiration.  Woozy legislators make cloudy laws.   

Pedestrians and bicyclists need also beware:  The Journal reviews recent studies that show breathing street-level fumes for just 30 minutes can intensify electrical activity in regions of the brain responsible for behavior, personality, and decision-making.  No question where this will end up ~ in the courtroom.  It’s the next Twinkie defense!  Air pollution made me do it.  No wonder road rage is on the rise. 

Scientists say they don’t know yet whether regular commuters breathing heavy traffic fumes suffer any lasting brain effect, but it seems likely.  Just look around the office.  You can spot the long-term, long-range commuters.  They’re the ones with the hazy eyes, vague expressions, and crabby attitudes.  They can’t complete a sentence without taking a swig of their dark roast Kona and gasping like Perry Mason.  Best to steer clear until research provides us a better antidote than caffeine.  It may be exacerbating the syndrome. 

The scary thing is exhaust fumes can extend farther from roadways than once thought.  Traffic fumes from some major L.A. freeways for example, reached as far as 1.5 miles downwind—10 times farther than previously believed.  It’s creeping into homes, parks, even schools. 

Children in areas affected by high levels of emissions scored more poorly on intelligence tests, were more prone to depression, anxiety, attention problems, and were twice as likely to have autism as children growing up in cleaner air. 

Thank Heaven researchers are exploring ways to alleviate traffic and its toxic exhaust.  Some simple solutions ~ E-Z pass carpool lanes, rerouting cars away from high congestions areas ~ already provide significant improvement.  

Children need their brain cells!  They have a long way to go.   

You and I may just have to hold our breath.

Is Time Running Out for the Beautiful People?

Here’s the beginning of our ignominious end - NBC News anchor Brian Williams teased viewers this week with the headline of an ominous lead story coming up on the nightly news:  certain hip replacements are failing and will have to come out. 

Easy for him to say.  Seems thousands of bionic men and women now face the daunting prospect of enduring a double surgical procedure to remove and replace their…replacements. 

So what’s next for Jane Fonda and all the rest of us boomers who’ve succumbed to deteriorating joints and metal-on-metal replacements for our ailing bones?  Jane’s a perfect representative of the post-boom phenomenon.  She’s had knee and hip replacement along with back surgery.  She’s 72, healthy, and looking great.  But that may be more aptly attributed to her cosmetic surgery.  She’s owned up to having the bags under her eyes deflated.  

What if all manner of high-tech enhancements developed and implanted over decades of the boomers’ era turn out to have a shelf life, as it were?  What if it’s not just Jane Fonda’s hip and knee replacements that will need recycling?  What about her baggy eyes? 

More than a few folks have had similar elective procedures.  Sure they’re non-essential and totally vain.  But are they susceptible to the ticking clock, too?  Are we approaching the Y2K of the self-conscious aging elite? 

If we don’t get this under control, we could wake up to the luddites’ nightmare:  All our technology turns on us, rebelling in the most unfortunate and unattractive ways. 

Remember Eddie Murphy in the remake of “The Nutty Professor”?  He had what we all want – a magic elixir – one sip and voila!  Thin!  Sexy!  Funny!  But of course, no Fountain of Fitness can exist in the real world. 

Murphy’s Professor Clump, as his newly svelte alter ego Buddy Love, seized the opportunity to pursue the girl of his dreams, the one his flabby, unfortunate self could not hope to impress.  But alas, in a crucial, public moment, just like Jane’s time-sensitive hip, Buddy’s potion breaks down.  Before our eyes, the professor bulges back to his prodigious former self, body part by gelatinous body part. 

Given the impending expiration of our man-made yet mortal appendages and restitutions, we could find ourselves in the same discomfiting circumstance. 

What if nose jobs expired, for example?  Right in the middle of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Kim’s pretty proboscis might just revert to its original, lumpy form.  A whole new kind of reality could present itself if the Plastic Surgeons of America sent a recall notice for the scaffolding underpinning Bruce Jenner's face work.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Imagine all the serene conversations in Hollywood bistros and suburban country clubs when, out of nowhere, a timer goes off and dozens of lifted foreheads advance to their rightful, age-appropriate positions, coming to rest somewhere in the neighborhood of one’s delicately plucked eyebrows.  In Washington, Nancy Pelosi would blink, giving Republicans in Congress false hope of victory. 

Why, those eyebrows themselves would travel into real estate appropriated by tacked-wide-open eyes, creating uninvited squints even in the shade of Carrera sunglasses. 

What if Botox … oh, never mind.  It does expire.  We know already that.  The wax melts and you’ve gotta keep getting shot up if you want to maintain that expressionless guise of indifference. 

Otherwise, Joan Rivers might disappear altogether. 

Hair transplants!  That would be hilarious!  What if those perfect plugs just unplugged, on cue, like so many spontaneous champagne corks, no matter where the “plug-ee” might find himself?  Like an electrified porcupine coming undone on the fairway, or the boardroom!   

In an apocalyptic scenario, voluptuous lips would shrink back to their original, severe Frau Bluchers.  Silicon breasts would collapse leaving folds of skin and yards of unfilled fabric limp in their wake.  All those pinned-back ears would once again flap free. 

Reminiscent of the cages being flung open at the zoo, all God’s creatures would run in gleeful abandon, returning to their natural states. OK, maybe not gleeful. 

I decline to reveal where I might wind up in such a scenario.  Parts of me could be susceptible to the fall of the empire, shall we say?  But which parts and where they’ll land remains a confidential, eyes only, need-to-know Top Secret.   

Suffice it to say that I keep the joints greased with glucosamine and the clocks wound tight.  Vigilant.  Ever vigilant.                                                                                                  

Just Send Smoke Signals

Washington politicians could take a lesson from the process for selecting a Pope employed by the cardinals of the Catholic Church.

 As you recall, when a Pope dies, cardinals from around the globe assemble at Vatican City, huddle up in the Sistine Chapel, peruse the resumes of all the prospective Pope candidates, and haggle, haggle, haggle.  When they finally agree on a new Pope, they send up a plume of white smoke, thus proclaiming their decision to the world.  

Hooray!  Well done!  For us, painless.  For them, mission accomplished and dignity retained. 

In those intermediary moments, when they’re bickering and disagreeing, when the extremists among them will not budge and even threaten to bring down the Church before they’ll compromise, they send up a billow of black smoke.   

That’s how we know things are unsettled in the cloister.  We sigh and exhale, shrug our shoulders.  What’s taking them so long? 

There may be multiple iterations and repeated puffs of sooty effluent.  We wait.  Even we Southern Baptists twice removed sit at seat’s edge.  We’re intrigued.  We’re titillated.  We wanna know. 

Of course, we find out who the new Pope is, but we never get to know who voted for whom.  We never learn which radical cardinal dug in on what point of contention.  We don’t know who caved.  We never realize how close to the brink the Church teetered. 

Could the Cardinals improve the process by sharing their deal breakers with the masses before going into the huddle?  Maybe they could draw strength for their positions from the perceived moral support of Catholics around the world who agree with them, “Yeah!  The new Pope better not relax the Fish on Friday rules.”  (Forgive my flippancy.) 

I wonder how it would go for the new Pope if all good Catholics knew he was a compromise candidate.  Would they sandbag him if they knew their first choice for the top dog was vetoed by a recalcitrant conservative or hardline liberal cardinal? 

No.  The process would not be improved.  It would be worse. 

The new Pope’s ability to lead would not be enhanced.  He would have a more difficult time asserting himself.  

I think our congress should consider this process for the upcoming Gang of Six “negotiations” on the remaining trillions of dollars of cuts mandated by the recent debt ceiling deal. 

Both parties seem likely to send their dug-in, hard-nosed, party-line perfect representatives instead of the moderates among them who might actually be able to negotiate effectively.  We’re already bracing ourselves for the process of disingenuous proposals, haranguing, lamenting, insincere counter proposals, gridlock, and at last, compromise. 

Why not lock them in to a beltway backroom and let them slug it out like the cardinals do – in seclusion? 

The cardinals surrender their cell phones and iPads.  They even sweep the Sistine Chapel for “bugs” before the conclave, so adamant are they that their deliberations remain secure, no tampering occurs, nor outside influences allowed to creep in.  The cardinals don’t come out between ballots and complain about their colleagues’ well-known ideological stances. 

How could our representatives decline being treated like cardinals?  We can ferry in food and fresh shirts.  Heck, we can sing a song and buy them all capes.  They can send up smoke signals to let us know what we already know:  They’re still fighting.  They haven’t decided.  It’s hard. 

We wouldn’t have to listen to their infantile whining and complaining.  They couldn’t take false encouragement from mindless press coverage of their fingers pointing hither and yon.  We would view the dark vapors wafting from the chamber, recognize them as the typical emissions we’ve come to expect from our elected officials, and wait. 

I know, I know.  Transparency.  Sunshine.  But must we hear every cry of “wolf”?  Must we reel in all red herrings of proposal and counter proposal?  Must we endure the artificial anguish of falling skies again and again? 

I say No!  Lock ‘em up.  Don’t let ‘em out until the white smoke flies.  We will be just fine out here, living our civilized lives.  And, as always, when they’ve reached an agreement, we will deal with their decisions.   

Just once, save what’s left of your dignity by doing the difficult dirty work away from the cameras and out of earshot.  Spare us the maddening and predictable blow by blow.  Just send up the smoke.

It's logical, isn't it?

I'm so glad the Supreme Court has allowed corporations and labor unions to make unlimited donations to political candidates.  Those corporations and unions will no doubt assess their own interests and begin donating immediately to any politician who might help them out.

See, that gives me hope.  Logically, corporations and unions might now look at schools and donate to them on the same enormous scale.

Afterall, their fate depends on schools too, not just on politicians. 

Sure, some corporations give money to schools already, if schools ask for it.  My school fills out applications every year and we sometimes receive as much as $5000 for teachers' materials, supplies, even equipment.

There's a website where teachers can go and apply for funding for as many as three projects of $400 each.  It's a big help.  It lifts our spirits when we get this kind of support.  Students definitely benefit.

But now, now we will get hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars!  We can refurbish our tired and sagging campuses. We can pay teachers commensurate with their training, skills, and contributions.  Reduce class sizes.  Give our students the real world curriculum they crave and the technology at school that they will encounter in those unions and corporations, the ones that currently bemoan students' knowledge and training.

These corporations and labor unions aren't stupid.  They know schools are fundamental to the success of communities.  Those communities make up their customers.  The schools feed their workforce.  They know.

There's nothing to hold them back now!  The Supreme Court said it's okay to give as much as they want.  Why, a consortium of major corporations could lift schools up to adequate funding---no! super funding so we can't lose!  Like the politicians.  If they want us to win, they will buy us a win.  Won't they?