Don't mess with my mail

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

                 – Dr. Charles W. Eliot, "The Letter"

Back in 2006, a lame duck Republican Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), a law that required the U.S. Postal Service to provide $72 billion pre-funding for post-retirement health care costs 75 years into the future. It had to meet that funding within the span of 10 years.

Think about that: potential postal employees not even born yet are guaranteed health benefits. No other government agency, and most private corporations, are required to provide such a benefit. Most benefit programs are pay-as-you-go.

That law basically took a self-sufficient and self-sustaining operation to the brink of bankruptcy with 13 consecutive years of million-dollar (perhaps more) losses.

In 2019, the USPS was required to pay $4.6 billion into the fund. But already crippled by the law, the USPS has defaulted on its payments since 2010.

There is some conjecture that the PAEA was designed to bankrupt the USPS in order to institute privatization of mail delivery.

Not only that, funds intended for that program have been diverted to help pay off the national debt.

In February of this year, the House of Representatives passed the USPS Fairness Act to repeal the PAEA. The bill currently sits idle in the Senate.

Fast forward to now. Under newly installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a megadonor to President Trump (thus raising a conflict of interest in what is supposed to be a nonpartisan appointment) and who has no USPS experience, claims a mandate to make the service more efficient and to operate more like a business (It's not a business; it's a service). In doing so, he has removed almost 500 sorting machines throughout the country, limited (or perhaps eliminated) overtime, and even attempted to remove some of those familiar blue-box mailboxes.

One argument we hear for reorganizing the Post Office is that overall first-class mail volume is down overall. And that may be true. But coming less than 80 days before an election, it's also abominable. And guess what? Christmas is coming. I don't see how this makes America great again.

The obvious consequence of all this is that mail delivery is inevitably slowing down. This is critical, coming as it does in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of an election year in which mail-in balloting seems to be more popular than ever as people hope/try to avoid possible Covid-19 infection while waiting in long, slow-moving voting lines. The moves to deconstruct the Post Office appear to be insidiously intentional and obstructionist.

It's bad enough that mail-in balloting could be hindered by DeJoy's actions, but delays in mail delivery for prescriptions is appalling, putting peoples' health at risk. And what happens when monthly bills not only arrive weeks late, but also past due? Are grace periods to be extended?

The seeds of our current postal system were planted by founding father Benjamin Franklin, when he was appointed Postmaster General by the Second Continental Congress on July 26, 1775 (before there was an United States). More than 245 years later, I can't imagine this current state of affairs is what Franklin had in mind.

It's almost un-American.

Did the earth move for you?

Tom Tussey and Jeff Miller, two former residents of Lexington's Park Place historic district and co-owners of the popular Main Street boutique Backyard Retreat, were calmly enjoying their second cup of coffee on the porch of their tiny getaway mountain house in spaciously sparse Sparta (pop. 1,770) this morning. The view from their chairs, as always, was splendid on this beautiful summer day.

Then, suddenly, the earth moved. Nobody ever expects the earth to move.

"The coffee just jumped out of our cups," said Tussey. "I didn't realize what was happening at first. But the thing I really didn't expect was the rumbling noise. It started off low, then built up louder, then went back down again, like a Doppler Effect.

An aisle in a Sparta Food Lion this morning.*

 "It was mind numbing and it took a short time to realize what was happening," added Tussey. "I never heard or experienced anything like it before."

It turns out that Tussey and Miller were just a few miles away from the epicenter of a significant 5.1 earthquake. Later reports rolling in this morning said the quake could be felt as far away as Alabama to the south and Virginia to the north, and was perhaps 5 miles deep in the earth.

In Lexington, less than 80 curvy back-road car miles away from Sparta, Kim and I were wondering what was going on, too. Kim was in the dining room on the laptop, and she said she could feel the house vibrate. I was in the next room, watching TV, and the 100-year-old windows of our bungalow just kept rattling for about 15-20 seconds. I went on the porch to investigate, thinking somebody was messing around. A neighbor or two came out of their homes and did the same, thus confirming each other's suspicions and affirming to ourselves that we were not going nuts after all.

"I've never been in an earthquake before," said Tussey. "We were looking out at the view, and when it came, everything went blurry, either because of the earthquake, or I guess it could be because I'm getting older.

"We didn't have any damage to our house, other then some bottles falling off of shelves and a few other things that fell over," said Tussey. "But nothing broke."

Some earthquake damage to a house in Sparta.**

There is some damage to downtown Sparta, said Tussey. Some streets are blocked off, with some broken glass here and fallen bricks there.

So far – and we're only in August – 2020 has been, well, a different year. In fact, it's been a different week, what with a hurricane hitting the North Carolina coast on Monday, and now an earthquake today. All of this in the midst of a pandemic in the middle of a contentious election year.

Tussey said he wouldn't mind experiencing another tremor or two. "I'm the kind of guy who runs toward a hurricane," said Tussey. Miller, on the other hand, has a different perspective. "My nerves are already shot," he said.

I have a brother, Scott, who lives near Tulsa, OK, where there is considerable earthquake activity of various magnitudes. "It's kind of a weird feeling when it happens," said Scott.

I have another brother, Dave, who lives in Alaska and where earthquakes can be part of the lifestyle. "Earthquake?" asked Dave. "Wow. What do those feel like?"

I don't know if we ("we" meaning Atlantic Seaboard) live near a fault line, but there was a major earthquake in Charleston, SC, in 1886. It measured somewhere between 6.9 and 7.3 on the Richter Scale before there was a Richter Scale (developed in 1935 by seismologist Charles Richter), and it knocked over more than 2,000 buildings and could be felt as far away as Boston, Milwaukee and New Orleans.

The theory behind that one was the quake was a millenium-long consequence of continental drift. OK, I'll buy it. What do I know? I'm just a retired sports writer.

My concern right now is aftershocks. Hey, this is 2020. Is an 8.2 just 80 miles away?

*Photo courtesy of Food Lion.
** Photo courtesy of Tom Tussey.

Virus warfare

Do you know what's amazing to me?

(Well, lots of things are amazing to me. I can't believe I'll be 70 years old in a few more months – how did that happen?; how do helicopters fly?; how do weeds grow in concrete or asphalt?)

But my flavor of amazement of the day are the 30,000 volunteers who have lined up across 89 different sites in the country to test the National Institute of Health/Moderna trial vaccine (with two doses) in hopes of battling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wow. That's like volunteering to go to war. And in a way, I guess it really is.

I know human trials are necessary for a vaccine that will be used on humans, but who makes that decision? The volunteers have to be multigenerational (Who volunteers their kid for this? Does grandpa raise his hand to test the serum?) and of various races. Some volunteers, I suspect, might have pre-existing conditions – for example, can you take the vaccine if you have heart disease?

If I am already healthy, do I want to get the virus? Do I want to be the one who gets the test vaccine, or do I want to be the one who gets the placebo?

And get this: right now, about 100 potential vaccines are in various stages of development. I guess that means more volunteers. The vaccine study in Oxford (in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson, I believe) will also need about 30,000 volunteers.

Apparently, there is a registry listing 150,000 people who are interested in volunteering for the trials. God bless them all.

Like all vaccines, there is a certain percentage of the population where an approved serum will have no affect. There's also a percentage of the population – about 20 percent – who say they will never take a vaccine.

There are doubters who say, hey, where's the vaccine for the common cold (which is also a coronavirus), or where's the cure for influenza, and hold it as an indictment either against science or a Big Pharma conspiracy to keep people sick in order to keep the money rolling in. You can find conspiracies in everything, if you are so inclined.

I myself believe in vaccines. Kim and I have gotten flu shots almost every year in our 40-year marriage, and have not gotten the flu, which I hold as empirical evidence that the flu shot works, even against a virus that mutates every year.

I thank my parents for having me vaccinated against smallpox when I was a child (the scar on my upper left arm has long since disappeared) and I remember taking the pink sugar cubes filled with the polio vaccine, which may have been a requirement to attend school back in the 1950s.

But even if a vaccine is approved, I wonder how effective it will be in a world filled with anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers? The doubters/resisters probably are the reason why the pandemic will linger until we reach herd immunity, which means at least 70 percent of the population will have to be exposed to the virus. We are currently in single digits of national exposure, which means it will take several more years before we attain herd immunity. In the meantime, the death toll will continue to increase.

(In the 1918 influenza pandemic, 675,000 Americans lost their lives (out of a population of 110 million) in a 24-month span. That translates to more than 1,300,000 million deaths in today's terms.)

You can reach herd immunity with a vaccine, too. So thank you, volunteers. Maybe we can reach herd immunity with a dose of herd mentality.

Baseball's back. Yay?

There's something about a baseball field that reaches down and grabs me by my core.

At first, I thought this feeling only pertained to major league fields. The first ballpark I ever saw in person was old Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. I was a sophomore in high school and had an opportunity to see a major league game for the first time ever.

To this day, I can still close my eyes and see the vibrant green grass of the outfield; the dark tan crust of the infield, the bazzillion watt candlepower of the stadium lights, the smells of spilled warm beer and Philly's signature soft pretzels, the electrified murmur of the crowd as we found our seats. My pulse quickened when the players took the field. It's all there for me. Instantly. To this day.

Then, after I became a small-town sports writer, I discovered the feeling was nearly the same when I went to cover games at Holt-Moffitt Field, or Salisbury's Newman Park or Thomasville's Finch Field. The stadiums were smaller, of course. But the baseball field dimensions were basically the same.

What is it about baseball that, for me at least, is like no other sport?

Baseball, of course, took a necessary hiatus when the coronavirus pandemic showed up. Opening Day was pushed back from March 26 until July 23 while MLB tried to figure out how to safely social distance while playing games.

So after four months elapsed, baseball took the field again the other night. And it was ... strange.

There are no fans in the stands (unless they are cardboard cutouts. Also, no electrified murmurs, unless it's canned; no soft pretzels; no stale beer). Players wear face masks in the dugout. The National League now has the designated hitter; extra inning games start with a runner on second base; most games are leaning toward regional (Yankees v. Mets; Cubs v. White Sox; Dodgers v. Angels) in an effort to cut down travel on airplanes.

The game is the same, but somehow different.

If there are no fans in the stands, why can't players play the game in gym shorts and t-shirts? Why can't umpires wear shorts? Can managers argue with umpires if they wear N95 masks? Perhaps not. It's not a good look for television.

Then there's this times-have-really-changed moment, when Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo joyfully dispensed hand sanitizer to Milwaukee base runner Orlando Arcia the other night:

Baseball also has this: It's a sometimes slow-moving, but ultimately an inevitable vehicle for social change, if not social awareness. Think Jackie Robinson.

So the other night, when the Nationals hosted the Yankees in their season opener, players from both teams knelt during the National Anthem in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Depending on where you stand in the political spectrum, you were either infuriated, or celebratory. I bet Jackie Robinson, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War II, and a civil rights activist, would have approved. Why? He was once court martialed for refusing to sit in the back of a segregated bus. He was later exonerated. His social reform roots were deep.

The pandemic, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, the economy, the Confederacy, the Constitution, have all descended and coalesced upon us almost at once, and it's exhausting.

I hesitate to turn to a work of fiction (even though the times we're living in seem stranger than fiction), but one of the best descriptions of baseball I've ever heard came from a fictional character, Terrance Mann, in "Field of Dreams" as he speaks to protagonist Ray Kinsella about his magical cornstalk-infested baseball field:

"The one constant through the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: It's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again."

Play ball.

Who was first?

Did you ever wonder who was first?

I was mowing the yard the other day – when there already was a heat index of 90 degrees at 10 a.m. – when the thought came to me, "Geez, who was the first person to mow his yard?"

For me, at least, mowing the yard readily lends itself sometimes to frivolous, sometimes vacuous free-thinking. The hum of the push mower engine is monotonous (even with ear protection), the mowing of rows of grass is relentlessly repetitive, and the flow of directionless thinking consequently is unleashed and apparently is unending.

I might discover the secret to world peace someday by mowing the yard.

Anyway, who was the first person to mow his yard (thereby inventing the lawnmower?) because he decided it made his property look better? I don't know.

I often digress in my own head. Who was the first Cro-Magnon to discover intimacy? I'm not talking procreation here – I'm talking about a kiss as an expression of affection. Did the first kiss evolve after some hairy, sweaty early human stumbled into personal grooming, thus eliminating body odor? Who was the first person to use something akin to soap for cleanliness? Or even water, for that matter. Who was the first to use an intoxicating scent?

Who initiated the first kiss – a male, or female? And who decided that a kiss was so earth-shaking that others had to be told about it?

Who was the first person to shave? Or a haircut? Who decided that was a good idea? Did shaving result in kissing?

Who was the first to imagine a divine entity?

Grooming, social convention, religion are all gigantic moments in mankind. Why aren't the first persons to discover these things listed by name in history books? Why is Babe Ruth famous, but Atouk isn't?

(I'm discovering that mowing the yard isn't the only thing that generates stream of consciousness – or, as it so happens, unconsciousness. So can writing a blog).

Somebody has to be first to discover whatever it is that has to be discovered. Right now, I'm waiting for the first Covid-19 vaccine. That person ought to be made famous when it happens.

In the meantime, if you drive by my house and the yard needs mowing, it probably means I've stopped thinking.

Passport to the world

In my experience, God must have a deep and intricate sense of humor.

Think of elephants. And giraffes. And gooney birds.

Anyway, about a year ago a history-geek friend of mine mentioned that he wanted to go back to see Normandy – the site of the world-changing D-Day invasion – one more time before he was too old to travel. Hmm, I thought. So would I, and I asked if I could tag along. Visiting Normandy has been a substrata bucket list item for me for a while, lost in the layers of all the other things I need to do in my life.

But crossing the Atlantic would require getting a passport. I'd never done that. I've been to about 40 of the 50 states, including Alaska, but I've never been overseas. Until I picked up a history book, I'd never given world travel much of a thought.

Now there was an opportunity.

So in February, when the Clerk of Court's office offered its annual passport day, Kim and I stood in a relatively fast-moving line and applied for our passports. After the paperwork was filled out and approved, and money exchanged, the nice lady behind the counter said our passports should arrive in four to six weeks.

Our passports are here. Now what...???

 That's when God stepped in and said, "Slow down, son. Here, try this pandemic on for size."

The four-to-six week waiting period turned into a three-to-four month waiting period, since there was suddenly an embargo on issuing new passports because of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

I don't often hear the voice of God, but I swear I could hear Him laughing this time. In my vision, He laughs with a deep, resonate voice, kind of like Geoffrey Holder did in those famous 7-Up cola nut commercials. Ha ha ha ha ha. Except deeper. I don't know how to make type face sound deeper.

(Incidentally, I don't see God as a corporeal entity, as if He were an old man with a long, white beard and shepherd's hook. To me, God is something more ethereal and exists primarily in our own spiritual context. But if He is a physical entity, then I hope She's female. A Black female. That would give those Confederates something to think about when they approach the Pearly Gates).

But I digress. Because of the virus, nobody was going anywhere. Especially, as it turns out, Americans, because we're stupid and we let the virus spike because we're going to Myrtle Beach and nobody is going to tell me to wear a face mask and I've got my rights. Europeans don't even want us to come over, even with our bulging wallets and unlimited credit and debit cards.

Anyway, in the middle of this current spike, guess what showed up in the mail? Yep. The passports arrived about two weeks ago. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Great. Now what? I'm not even going to Gettysburg this year. Now that's really saying something.

The trip to Normandy was never set in stone. It was always in the talking/dreaming stage, but if we did decide to go, at least I have my passport ready. The lack of one is no longer an obstacle.

Looks like for now, I have to go to Normandy in my mind, in the same way that James Taylor goes to Carolina.

I need some cola nuts, and I need them now.

China syndrome

Back when I was in high school, during the Middle Ages in the 1960s, I had the choice of which second language I wanted to learn.

That's because a second language was an elective in the college prep curriculum. We could pick between German, French and Spanish, I believe. And to think I was still having trouble with English.

Since I was living in a place called Center Valley, in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch country (local farmers still had hex signs on their quaint but attractive barns), I figured German was the logical choice. I mean, we had regional breweries with names like Horlacher, Neuweiler, Piels and Rheingold, for cyring out loud, and bakeries that made pretzels with the names of Miller (no doubt anglicized from Meuller) and Wolfel.

Well, German would have been a great choice if I wanted to be a waiter in a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant or a brewer in Allentown.

But as the world turns, Spanish might have been a better option with the gradual increase of Hispanic immigration. Didn't foresee that at the time, of course. So I ended up taking two years of German in the 10th and 11th grades, and later, a semester at Kutztown State College (ach du lieber. Kutztown?). Nearly 50 years later, I've forgotten most of what I learned, although I can still count to 10, auf deutsch. Yay, me. I can still translate words like Lufthansa and Volkswagen for you, if you want. Very helpful.

But even Spanish might have been a short-sighted choice. Maybe Chinese is the way to go these days. Especially if you order something from Amazon.

A couple weeks ago, Kim and I decided we needed a thermometer in the house, just to make sure we weren't running any Covid temperatures. We haven't had a thermometer in forever. I can't even remember owning an old mercury thermometer, the kind you shook out before placing it under your tongue.

Our new thermometer. (Click to enlarge)

 So Kim put in her order. A couple of weeks later, we got our new digital thermo-meter. From BaiQen. I couldn't wait. I opened the box and unfolded the instructions. Everything – and I mean everything – was written in Chinese. Not a word of English to be found.

I googled BaiQen and found a short video on YouTube showing me how to operate the thermometer. Put it under your tongue, press the button, wait for the beep.

Okay. I did that. And the digital readout told me my temperature was 37.4.

Well, crap. Maybe it was broken. I tried it again, just to make sure. 37.6. Clearly, I was getting hot.

Then I looked at the picture of the thermometer that was printed on the box. The readout in the picture was in Celsius. Jeez. I went back to my computer and did a Celsius to Fahrenheit (a good German name) conversion. Turns out, I'm normal (in a manner of speaking). 98 point something.

The lesson here is that you have to be careful when ordering from Amazon. Kim also ordered hand wipe sanitizers, and what we got were those mini packages, each with a strip about two inches long and a half-inch wide. Fifty of them. Mostly, you use them to wipe down an area on your arm where you might give yourself an insulin injection, or something like that.


An acquaintance of ours told me she ordered a book on Amazon to give as a gift to her daughter. It cost $30. But she had failed to read the small print. When the book arrived, it was all in Italian, right down to the copyright.

Now I'm thinking we might have to order something else just to figure out the stuff we ordered: Rosetta Stone.