"For years — and long after segregation ended — the Montpelier Station, Va., post office operated in a building where signs reading 'White' and 'Colored' hung over two separate doors."

"The signs are not meant for people to follow, but rather intended as features of a museum exhibit about the country’s era of racial segregation. No matter: The U.S. Postal Service is done being associated with it. Over the summer, the Postal Service shut down its small, one-employee operation housed within the building, telling news outlets in a statement this week that it 'determined the display at the site was unacceptable to the Postal Service.'"

From "Postal Service ditches office with ‘White’ and ‘Colored’ historical signs/The post office shared a space with a museum, where the signs are part of an exhibit on segregation" (WaPo).

These weren't doors inside in some display but the entrance doors to the building, the building you needed to enter to get to the post office. It's one thing for the government to offer to teach people about the history of racism in a museum setting, which they may choose to visit, quite another to confront people with it as they go about their ordinary business and need to interact with the government.

Presumably the idea was that it was good to impose this lesson on white people, but there are at least 2 big problems with that idea. First, members of a minority group matter, even if they are a small proportion. And second, how do you know the white people are taking the message the right way? Are they solemnly chastened or improperly amused or smug or even feeling superior? It's too negative a message to assume people are taking it the right way and responding correctly.

CORRECTION: The building is in Montpelier Station, Virginia, not Montpelier, Vermont, which probably didn't have signs like that. Montpelier Station is in Orange County, which has a population that is about 12% black.

The Ukrainian postal service issued stamps showing a Ukrainian fighter giving a Russian warship the finger.

The NYT reports. 

People lined up for hours to get these stamps — a million were printed — which quickly sold out.

The image related to an incident early in the conflict, when a warship demanded the surrender of a small group of fighters guarding a rocky island in the Black Sea. The gesture by the fighter was a visual representation of the profane phrase one of the island’s defenders used in a radio transmission, in which he told the warship where to go....

That's a wordy way to avoid quoting the phrase "Russian warship, go fuck yourself." But the stamp avoided displaying the words. It switched to the wordless finger. 

And then, the day after the stamps came out, the Ukrainians hit a Russian ship — the Moskva — and the ship later sank.

"He would have his operatives fan out, going house-to-house, convincing voters to let them mail completed ballots on their behalf as a public service."

"The fraudster and his minions would then take the sealed envelopes home and hold them over boiling water. 'You have to steam it to loosen the glue,' said the insider. He then would remove the real ballot, place the counterfeit ballot inside the signed certificate, and reseal the envelope. 'Five minutes per ballot tops,' said the insider. The insider said he took care not to stuff the fake ballots into just a few public mailboxes, but sprinkle them around town. That way he avoided the attention that foiled a sloppy voter-fraud operation in a Paterson, NJ city council race this year, where 900 ballots were found in just three mailboxes. 'If they had spread them in all different mailboxes, nothing would have happened,' the insider said. The tipster said sometimes postal employees are in on the scam. 'You have a postman who is a rabid anti-Trump guy and he’s working in Bedminster or some Republican stronghold … He can take those [filled-out] ballots, and knowing 95% are going to a Republican, he can just throw those in the garbage.'"

From "Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots" (NY Post).

"Have you noticed how the left moves seamlessly from one batshit conspiracy theory to another, while calling the right paranoid?"

Asks Glenn Reynolds, linking to "The Manufactured Hysteria Over Mail Delivery."

It's the week of the Democratic convention — whatever that is. I'm afraid the party got hoodwinked into making the post office the big issue this week. Isn't it mostly a bargaining chip in a deal that will soon be closed? Shouldn't all of Trump's other many purported deficiencies be highlighted?

To convince me that the Democratic Party isn't making a mistake, you'd have to argue 2 things. First, that Trump's other supposed deficiencies really are not such a big deal, and second, that Trump is headed to victory and the Democrats’ best strategy is to undermine his second term with allegations that he cheated.

The Post Office screws up its effort to honor Maya Angelou with a stamp.

They've put her smiling face next to a quote — "A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song" — that she didn't write.



As WaPo reports, the quote appeared in a 1967 children's book by Joan Walsh Anglund called "A Cup of Sun." Anglund — who is 89 — says it's her original quote (except that her "he" has been changed to "it").

A Postal Service spokesman, Mark Saunders, initially said he had never heard of the Anglund quote until The Washington Post informed him of it. In response, he sent a link to a 2013 blog post interview that quoted Angelou saying the phrase. In a later statement, he also said “numerous references” attributed the the quote to her as well.

“The Postal Service used her widely recognized quote to help build an immediate connection between her image and her 1969 nationally recognized autobiography, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ ” the statement said.

So, the Postal Service's answer is don't blame us, blame Angelou, who is not alive to say she never said she wasn't quoting somebody else.

Anglund is handling the spotlight well:

"It’s an interesting connection, and interesting it would happen and already be printed and on her stamp,” Anglund said. “I love her and all she’s done, and I also love my own private thinking that also comes to the public because it comes from what I’ve been thinking and how I’ve been feeling."

Bash the Post Office, say what you will about Angelou, but consider rewarding Anglund by buying her little book, "A Cup of Sun."

Mailing babies and bees, dancing the Frugue and the Watusi, and how to spell Lucy/Luci.

The news from 100 years ago.

Babies are not mailable. The post office so holds in an edict barring them from the parcel post. The question arose over a request by the postmaster at Stratford, Okla., for a ruling by the department as to whether a patron of his office could send a 2-year-old child by parcel post from Twin Falls, Idaho, to Stratford. The postmaster was greatly puzzled, because he could find nothing in the regulations covering such a case. It was the first time the authorities here had been asked to rule upon the question and it caused a mild sensation. After reference to the parcel post regulations it was discovered that the Oklahoma postmaster was right, that there was nothing in them covering such a case. It was therefore decided that all human beings and live animals are barred from the mails. The one exception is the queen bee, which is the only living creature that can enjoy the privileges of the parcel post.

The news from 50 years ago:

President Johnson's 16-year-old daughter, Lucy Baines, danced the 'Frugue' last night, surprising White House aides and acting just like an average American teenager. Lucy was attending a weekend high school conference on religion at Buck Hill Falls in the Pocono Mountains. The attractive brunette, wearing a navy blue skirt and white blouse, arrived at the dance for conference delegates about 10 p.m. Lucy was the hit of the dance. She danced with seven or eight young men. They twirled away dancing the Frugue, a dance popular with teenagers.

I could only find video of Luci dancing the Watusi: here. The bad news is: The clip has no audio. The good news is: She's dancing with Steve McQueen. Did the newspaper quoted above misspell her name? Is it Luci or Lucy? The issue of how to spell the name of the President's teenage daughter was also in the news 50 years ago. From March 2, 1964:

President and Mrs. Johnson's younger daughter may prefer to spell her name "Luci," but her mother says firmly that the official spelling remains "Lucy."...

Mrs. Johnson's verdict on the name came when Malcolm Kilduff, White House press aide, was checking the guest list with her. With pencil poised, he asked: "Luc-I?" Quickly Mrs. Johnson said: "No, spell it L-u-c-y."

And what's with "Frugue"? Isn't it "Frug"? And how do you dance the Frugue/Frug? Here's how you dance it if you are rich:



If you're utterly awed by that — and I was — here's the whole movie.

"Awfully cold this year. This is the first time in 10 years that I actually started wearing pants to work."

"Once I hit the zero mark, that was it...."

An extreme example of the tendency of postal workers to wear shorts.

Amazon gets the Postal Service to do Sunday deliveries.

And WaPo calls it "Amazon’s brilliant plan to rescue the Postal Service and disrupt the shipping industry."

Amazon could have offered to pay the Postal Service for carrying more of its packages generally, and USPS would have gotten a much-needed injection of cash....

By launching Sunday deliveries, the Postal Service has moved to where its longtime competitors aren't. Hardly anybody in any industry delivers on Sunday, with the exception of newspapers. As a business idea....

The other reason it's disruptive? This is one of the few cases we've seen of what we'll call reverse contracting — when the private sector hires a government agency to fill its need rather than the other way around. 

This might be a good place to remind you of the brilliance of the Amazon Associates Program, which lets you make a cost-free contribution to writers like me. (The "shop Amazon" link is always at the top of this blog in the banner.)

"I get mail twice a day, once from the mailman and once from the neighbors putting mail in the right boxes."

A wisecrack by rhhardin in such perfect one-liner-joke form that I had to Google to see if it was an old joke, even though it's not believable that rh would copy and paste some comedian's old joke.

But if it were some old comedian's old joke, which old comedian would it be?
	Lenny Bruce
	George Carlin
	Garrison Keillor
	George Burns
	Red Skelton
	Charley Weaver
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"Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, 'What's the news?' as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels."

"Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. 'Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe' -- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself."

An old quote that crosses my mind as I realize I have yet to check the news this morning.

Do you recognize that quote? It's from the oft-quoted "Walden," and I'm amused to see the next paragraph:

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. 

Read in isolation, that sounds like Henry David Thoreau foresaw email and the internet, but, in fact, he's at the opposite end of the technology spectrum:

To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life... that were worth the postage. 

I have written 34,859 posts on Blogger — this is #34,860 — and they were surely worth the "postage," since I have paid $0.00 to write to you like this.

The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. 

Boldface added.

If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. 

But a man on a vintage tractor was killed by a vintage firetruck in a 4th of July parade, and a cop shot the Rottweiler of a man he was arresting for photography the other day, and what's happening with those 17-year cicadas? Surely, these details from elsewhere need to be uploaded into our furiously grinding cogs of cognition.

One is enough. 

If you've read one dead dog story, you've read them all.

If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. 

In my defense, I am an old woman. I've had coffee, and have moved on to water. Are you a philosopher? The test is: Do you think all news is gossip?

Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure -- news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. 

What news stories are you reading this morning that might just as well have been written a year ago?

As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions...

All these people that you mention/Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame/I had to rearrange their faces/And give them all another name...

.... they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers -- and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.

What's the news from Egypt?

What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! "Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news."

All these Chinese names you mention... presumably, what's the news of how to spell them today?

"Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week -- for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one -- with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?"

What is the fit conclusion to your ill-spent week?

No more Saturday mail.

Do you care that Saturday mail is gone?
	Yes, why is my world changing?
	Yes, it symbolizes American decline.
	No, paper mail is mostly a waste, and nothing matters about Saturday.
	No, Saturday mail was a make-work scheme for public employment.
	I don't care enough to pick one of those options.
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"He works overnight at the post office, comes home, paints a little bit, takes a nap and then does it all over again."

"He survives on two to three hours of sleep. Eats a sandwich on his break at the post office. He gets a 30-minute break, and then he goes back to sorting mail."

The end of the Post Office?

Is it unthinkable?

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.

Why not close it down? Isn't it strange that it's on the brink — or really over the brink... in that Wile E. Coyote way...



... of collapsing entirely... and yet they still haven't eliminated Saturday delivery?

[D]ecades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees....

“The situation is dire,” said Thomas R. Carper, the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the postal service. “If we do nothing, if we don’t react in a smart, appropriate way, the postal service could literally close later this year. That’s not the kind of development we need to inject into a weak, uneven economic recovery.”

My preference is always: do nothing. That's the presumption you need to overcome. It's good for government and it's good for your individual life too. (For decades, my personal motto has been: Better than nothing is a high standard.)

Why not let this propped-up competitor to FedEx and UPS (and the internet) fall? There would be losers but there would also be winners.



Why are we so afraid to find out? Remember what Rahm says:



"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

ADDED: My postman just delivered a 615-page catalog from Restoration Hardware. Why was that a feasible business move for Restoration Hardware? I've never mail-ordered anything from them. Why is the government subsidizing this inefficiency? If I were interested in buying something from RH, I would go to their website. Instead, I have to lug this heavy object to the garbage can/recycle bin? Think of the carbon footprint. I do! But I don't believe the government believes the climate change hype. Because they never act like they do.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paddy O said:

Ann, watch out. Don't mess with the mail. I shouldn't even be talking to you, but I'm telling you as a friend. Here's how it's going to happen: you may be walking. Maybe on a crisp, autumn day just like today. When a mail truck will slow beside you, and a door will open, and a mailman you know, maybe even trust, will offer to give you a lift. And no one will ever see you again!

"Gotta be careful what goes on line pookies... The ex would love to fry me with that."

Written on a blog by a woman who subsequently lost the monthly $850 she'd been receiving after she testified that she was too disabled to work. The woman, Dorothy McGurk, had been blogging about belly dancing:

"My belly dancing is the reason why I adore myself so much."

The ex, it should be noted, is a mailman.

Who gives a damn about Saturday mail delivery?

Really, why the handwringing over this? Of all the problems...