The budget cuts happened because Congress forced the post service to restructure their pension plans and pay for them entirely up front rather than gradually over time as they have done in the past. Not that long ago, institutions like this could depend on pension plans to work. But finance and the credit markets failed and many of those plans and funds lost big time c. 2007-10 - and no one was sure any longer when the credit markets would come back with much certainty. Many of the details are here.
So it's not the post's fault they are in such straights. And yet they've always done a great job. They get doubly hammered by finance and Congress - who in turn can't or won't come up with their own budget, because they can't agree on the what-for or the how-much or the where does it come from.
Always liked the stamps. As a child we lived in rural West Virginia. The place was several miles out along a dirt road and turned out to be the end of this leg of our mailman's delivery route. He would drive the extra miles round trip to make sure we'd get our mail, even on Saturday in snowstorms or beautiful, still, spring or summer days. He would pull up in his personally owned, 2-ton truck, and put our mail in the mailbox, on the other side of the road, just below and to the west of the house. Then shutting the box door and pushing the little metal red painted flag on the right hand side of the box down - to alert to us he'd been there - he could bring his right hand back into the truck and shift his truck into reverse. Placing his arm as usual on the back of the seat glancing at the rear view mirror and then out the back window of his truck, he drove it backwards up the road he'd just come, back away from the house, as he did the day before and the days before that to the driveway forty yards from the house where he'd back in and turn around and then leave the way he'd come. 'The mailman came!' I would run out the front door, down the length of the porch, down the steps and across past the tree and down the concrete steps under an apple tree across the road, on days I expected mail. Recalling the memory now I remember the smell of the dust that would kick up because a vehicle, the mailman's truck had come and gone. The dust from the dirt road still lingers. I have no memory of the guy's name. Maybe he chewed sunflower seeds, or smoked cigarettes before that. But he came from the outside world and then backed up on his way out leaving letters or maybe some little package. Sometimes he never made the trip at all if there was no mail. There was a box in the back of his truck with a sign that said US MAIL.
But, being ten, it was the stamps or the packages that might get sent that I was after. I realized even then that you didn't have to like something to do it every day.
So when I heard the news this morning about the loss of Saturday delivery, of course I remembered how it used to be and went looking for stamps. So this is about stamps and a little why I like 'em.
Little colorful windows on other places and times both visually, but also in a pragmatic way. They could also be the necessary ticket for a sent parcel. It worked both ways. It stood for what it did. Something very no-nonsense and non-virtual this dual concept seems to me now. A relic of a time before when things could actually stand for and be the thing they designated. Nowadays it seems there is always a temporal aspect to symbols of whatever kind. Their meaning changes or the name may change, subject to time and the market.
Different countries did it differently but many of the patterns are the same. For some time now, the US has used pictures of articles of american folk-art for its lowest denomination stamps.
'Tiffany Lamp', 'Navajo Necklace', 'Silver Coffeepot', 'Chippendale Chair' are used for the 1,2,3,4 cent stamps. 'American Toleware' and 'American Clock' are the five and ten cent stamps and have been used for years.
Higher or special value stamps of longer use often have photos or depictions of national parks, like Yosemite or Glacier National Parks. Every year there are state anniversaries depicted. Every dozen years or so there are full sets of state flag stamps. There are holiday stamps, social awareness stamps, flag forever stamps. But those are so common though they carry most of the traffic, the last 40+ years have increased the technology and color possibilities to the point that most anything can be depicted.
The set of Chinese Year stamps - the Ox, the Rabbit, the Dragon and the Snake - are great and very different from the old set. Last year's Cherry Blossom Anniversary gets a nice set. There are new stamps for the 150 year anniversary of the battle of New Orleans and Antietam of the american civil war. A very bold one announcing the 150 years since the emancipation proclamation. Baseball heroes, Latin singers, Industrial Design Markers, Pixar characters are new. Fruit, flowers, toys, even cartoons are recurrent and common around the world through the decades. Weather Vanes and Hawaiian shirts are new. Poets, filmmakers, even Miles Davis gets a set with Edith Piaf.
So buy some stamps. Even if they are old the price and their value usually goes up.
someone will want them eventually.
No comments:
Post a Comment