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The Post Office Leaves Its Stamp on Us

2/25/2013

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The post office has been in the news lately.

A lot in the news.

It's never a good sign when something we take so much for granted suddenly blips onto the radar. Built into the granted-taking is ubiquity. And seamlessness. Only when the fabric begins to show some wear do we begin to pay attention. Let's hope in this case it's not too late for salvage.

I worked for the Postal Service for 26 years, so I've been paying attention for quite some time. I've never been an apologist for the organization. Like any large entity, it has its problems, its functionality bogged beneath the weight of itself. And the USPS's quasi-semi-pseudo-governmental status hasn't contributed to its ability to thrive in a rapidly evolving communications market.

I'm not especially interested in discussing the whys or hows or the details of the decline of the Postal Service. These have been examined at length in the media and, as importantly I think, in Town Hall meetings and around the country's supper tables. Also under discussion have been the Service's many successes. Or so it would seem, judging by the public's resistance to allowing the stamp of the Postal Service to be cancelled into oblivion.

The one conversation that really fires me up is one that I don't see much written about. The Postal Service is, despite its official status, at its core a government agency. And I don't know of any such agency whose continued existence requires that it be entirely self-supporting. Sure, some agencies are able to assess user-specific fees which offset some administrative costs, but it's never assumed that the agency will generate the revenue necessary to completely pay its own way. That the Postal Service has accomplished just this for over for forty years is to its credit, but the Service should not be handcuffed to an arrangement that is no longer tenable.

Sure, we need to talk about the viability of this or that mail service or discuss improved transportation networks. We should debate the number of service days in a week. We can argue appropriate staffing levels due to changing shipping volumes. And weigh the relative value of a small post office in a rural community or the necessity of one particular processing plant or other. Every organization should always be working toward its better, smarter self. But a government's mission is not a corporation's mission. A government's mission is to serve its people.

The Postal Service's own website sums this up best:

The history of the United States Postal Service is rooted in a single, great principle: that every person in the United States – no matter who, no matter where – has the right to equal access to secure, efficient, and affordable mail service.

It would be nice for us all to write our Congresspersons. But failing that, we could always email them a link.

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Monday's Just Another Word For . . . um . . . Thursday?

2/18/2013

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. . . stands for
STAY TUNED!

The week is young . . .

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Come On Paper, Light My Fire

2/11/2013

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Those-in-the-know know that I've spent some time lately working on my collages. I've been away from the practice for a while, so my efforts have largely gone toward reacquainting myself with all the papers & materials, gizmos, gadgets, goops & glops I like to use when I conjure my creations.

One of the things I have been doing is making "grounds," the bases on which new collages might be built. I like to manipulate paper, so I've been busy cutting & tearing, affixing & brayering. The plan is to develop an inventory of these bases so that foundational material will always be at the ready when I want to start on a new project.

Last night I was reading an article on blogging which advised keeping text to a minimum and getting straight to the pictures instead. That one was a bit of a head-scratcher—isn't the point of a blog, um, the writing?—but this morning I've decided to do just that. And so I present you with some bits and pieces of my collage beginnings. These are the firestarters of my imagination. Do they fire anything in you?

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Oh, Bother. Why Bother With Those Bitty Obits?

2/4/2013

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When word came this week that André Cassagnes, inventor of the Etch A Sketch, had died, a little dial twisted inside me, and a squiggly black line tugged at my heart.

I had never heard of Cassagnes, had never even considered that there might have been a real person behind that iconic, maddening toy of my childhood, behind tens of millions of other childhoods.

But here was Cassagnes—baker's son, electrical technician, man with a story—and were it not for his invention which has endured for over fifty years and the obituary reporting his death at the age of 86, I never would have heard of him.

When I first read the news of his death, I thought I'd end up writing about toys and games—even candy bars—remembered from my past, many of which have been reappearing in the stores these days in a sort of retro revival. But then I got to thinking about the obituaries themselves, how they are fading toward their own demise. And how it's looking pretty unlikely that they will ever be revived.

The good, local newspapers still print them. These notices of death are often the only means that one-time friends and distant family members have to learn about the loss. An obituary offers the practical information about arrangements and services, but it also provides a public record of an person's life. These records can be precious to generations to come, links to an otherwise inaccessible history, but in the present moment, a community that values its humanity does itself well to take pause, if only for a moment, and recognize the loss of those who have walked in its midst.

It's particularly sad to note that my own community newspaper, for economic reasons, has ceased to publish the standard obituaries. Sure, an option remains for loved ones to pay for column space to post a personally written notice. But while these paid remembrances can be heartwarming as well as illuminating, they are infrequently timely, and no replacement for those traditional postings, wherein each of the lost, regardless of means or history or social status, had one final chance to stand equally among all for recognition. For remembrance. The barest bones of our lives have become, it seems, as ephemeral as a child's scrawlings on an Etch A Sketch.

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The Post Office Leaves Its Stamp on Us

Monday's Just Another Word For . . . um . . . Thursday?

Come On Paper, Light My Fire

Oh, Bother. Why Bother With Those Bitty Obits?

Nancy Carol Moody

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