I have been meaning to talk to you about this for a while, but in the great scheme of things it didn’t rise to the collapse of the Euro, or the world overheating, Canada pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty, the greedy fat cats who broke the world, or those Occupy folks who seem to think that everything ought to be free and who, in order to help the working stiff, are trying to shut down the shipping ports on the West Coast in order to…
Oh, hell, I don’t know how that helps anyone on the eve of the big shopping season.
Or the Iranians and the Chinese, though I think we ought to say thanks to our friends in the Middle Kingdom and India who told the self-important unaccountable UN bureaucrats in Durban that maybe they would get around to signing on to a new Kyoto Protocol in a few years, even if Canada won’t.
I think that is rich, really. The European Union seems determined to commit suicide, something they seem to try in new ways every fifty years or so.
They might be saved by South Asia this time. Or not.
Anyway, alongside the other pressing matters to freak out about, there is the matter of our own Postal Service self-destructing. It has happened with such glacial slowness that I didn’t really notice.
The nice Letter Carrier comes to Big Pink six days a week and fills up my little box mostly with things I don’t want, didn’t ask for, and won’t look at.
We now have a privatized Government Agency that has changed is mission from meeting its appointed rounds in sleet and snow to giving me brightly colored advertising, solicitations for money and political materials for people I would not cross the street to throw up on.
You know the latest- the threat to not to deliver things we don’t want on Saturdays, which actually seems sort of fair.
I do recall the instant that the Postal Service became an irritant. All that stupid material was piling up in the mailbox, spilling out onto the county road, announcing that I was not home and essentially saying: “ya’ll come on in” to any of the gap-toothed folks driving back to their meth labs in the woods.
Anyway, we are having a crisis about management ineptitude, the unions, the burden of the pensions for the letter carriers, and the stupid Congress who won’t shutter a single local Postmaster.
It is sad. I used to say things like “the government is supposed to take care of the national defense and deliver the mail. Everything after that is negotiable.”
Now I don’t say that. But, there is so little that matters to me in the daily delivery that it managed never to become an issue, but rather a mild irritant.
I mean, when you actually have to go to the post office, what is going on?
In my neighborhood, the former Buckingham Theater that serves as the local point of presence is doing all kinds of stuff that seems a little out of the core business area: money orders, remittance paperwork, strange bundles destinated for overseas. It is more than a little like visiting the DMV, or the United Nations Security Council.
The Post Office is still relevant for these few weeks before the festival of giving things to each other. In my case, just sort of. I am done trying to prove that I am a thoughtful SOB. Not enough energy and not enough spirit. I am not doing cards this year, and not really sending anyone gifts beyond the immediate circle of the kids and some selected family.
You probably have a clue why. I just can’t get in the mood of the season and want this whole sad end of life’s parade to go by with as much dignity as we can muster. I got Raven his usual metal airplane model, and it was delivered by FedEx a month or more ago.
It is kind of fun to watch him try to open the packaging, seeing the synapses firing, but I don’t think he is going to be able to do that this year. I will go over and help him, if I can see a break in the weather and get up there to ensure that he gets one gift at least, and sit with Big Mama and hallucinate over some old movies.
This, I am betting, is going to be his last year. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
Not so for Big Mama, but we will work that out as we go along. She can watch movies just about anywhere, after all, and once Raven’s part of this is resolved, maybe we can move on.
Anyway, I was taking care of one last bit of holiday business with the nice folks at Pond Hill Farms. Their stuff is great- I love the Ball Jars of corn relish, and hot garlic jelly and there is nothing better than brats smothered in their secret recipe sauerkraut-and-sweet pickle mix from the Ball jar. But the raw honey from Michigan clover and Michigan bees is to die for.
If there is anything better in a rich mug of Dazbog coffee in the morning I don’t know what it is. So, I was getting a case of it delivered to a pal out west, and I asked if I could have them use FedEx. That seemed to nonplus the nice lady on the phone, and she had to check and see if they could do that.
As it turned out, they could, but Pauline asked me why I wanted them.
“The letter carrier on that route is a jerk, and he would try to jam the glass jars into the mailbox and smash them. FedEx goes right up to the house, and I have confidence that the honey will make it intact.”
I could almost see her nodding on the other end of the line.
I have to be out in Fairfax early this morning to attend some critical all-day training, so I will just leave it at that. I am sure there is a better way to deliver the mail than what we have, now that all the bills are paid online and all that comes is Government-subsidized advertising. This is not what Ben Franklin had in mind.
If Ben came back, I am pretty sure he would be working for Big Brown, or DDL or somebody. They get things done quickly, and not one of them has delivered an advertising flyer yet.
The comparison is enough to make you want to go….well, you know.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com