Rural Free Delivery

 Until today, I didn't know the postal service had a podcast.  Very interesting. How Rural Free Delivery Changed America | Mailin’ It! - The Official USPS Podcast

Post Office adventure

I went to the post office to buy stamps--only one employee, so I waited about 20 minutes. After I made my selection when I got to the counter, my credit card wouldn't work. I had just used it before I got there. The clerk rubbed it, we reinserted, and it still wouldn't work. Then the young woman behind me walked up with one package said she'd pay, and offered her credit card. I was stunned. Was this a TV show? I explained it was $27.50, not just a couple of stamps. She said, that's OK, I'll pay. Then I suggested she buy what she needed, and I'd step aside, and we'd see if the machine would take her card. She did that--for fifteen cents! She had taped the stamps to her package, so had to buy new stamps, but she had too many on the envelop so she only needed 15 cents. So then I tried my card, and the machine worked. Crazy day.

I've paid ahead at the grocery store if someone was short, but never $27.50.

One of the sheets I selected was the post office murals. . . Piggott, AR; Anadarko, OK; Florence, CO; Deming, NM; Rockville, MD. Mt. Morris, IL has a mural, but it didn't make the cut. http://www.wpamurals.com/mtmorris.htm

Another sheet was the Made of Hearts design.  According to the USPO website, “The art for this latest stamp in the LOVE series features horizontal rows of red and pink hearts on a white background.  Toward the center, red hearts in varying sizes replace pink hearts in a formation that creates one large red heart, the focal point of this graphic design.”

My third choice was the Lunar New Year—Year of the Rat.  It looks a lot like a blue cat with a gold crown and tassels on its ears.

No wonder you didn’t get a thank you note for that gift

The Maya Angelou stamp

The words on the stamp, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song,” were written by Joan Walsh Anglund in her children’s book “A Cup of Sun.”

She had 18 books of poetry, essays, plays, short stories—and the Postal Service couldn’t find even one line of hers that fit?

Fake Statue of Liberty stamp is sort of a symbol of our problems

We always end up with one and two cent stamps to add to the old stamps after the price increase, so this time at the post office I bought "forever" stamps commemorating the Civil War, 1861.

I'm glad I didn't buy the fake Lady Liberty stamps. The Post Office used an image of the face of a half size replica of the Statue of Libery of resin and styrofoam in Las Vegas instead of the real Statue of Liberty. Apparently its a stock Getty photo, and no one noticed it until 3 billion were printed.

Somehow, it sort of makes me think of other things going on in this country.

Post Office in trouble

A very naive reader of USAToday suggested today that all we need to do is cut out the junk mail to save the Post Office. Sorry, dearie, then your postage would really go up--what you call "junk" is what floats the rest of the boats. And who are you to tell me that the grocery store flyer is junk, or the appeal from Lower Lights medical ministry on the west side is junk, or the church newsletter (ours is no longer mailed, but I still get one from my former church) is junk, or the pizza and spaghetti coupons from Iacono's, or the post card from the guy running for city council or the office supply store are junk? Hello! How much more of our economy would you like to see go under and ask for bailouts with your tax dollars?

"The Postal Service lost $1.1 billion in its latest quarter. That number would be even larger if it weren't for direct mailings, which now constitute 52 percent of mail volume, up from 38 percent in 1990. Revenue from direct mail "is the financial underpinning of the Postal Service—it could not survive without it," says Michael Coughlin, former deputy postmaster." Newsweek