CHANGE -- NOT NICKLES AND DIMES -- LIFESTYLE

OK, brace yourselves.  I slid a bunch of deep philosophy thoughts in on you a couple of times this week.  Not this time.  This is going to be nothing but sheer common sense that we can all believe in.  Oh, Yeah!
Two or three days ago I got a long email that I had received many times before.  When you're old like I am, you receive emails that resemble editorials that you read 40 years ago.  Those who send them to you over email think that they are new and revolutionary.  As a matter of fact, they are, for the most part, nothing but history repeating itself.  The worst part of it all is, we old people think it has been email all along.  Now, you know the email I am talking about.  The one that starts out, "Changes are coming..."  No?  You don't say?  Change?  Oh my goodness!  We haven't had any of that for a long time.  Hhmmm, let me see.  When was it the last time you mailed a post card for $0.01?  How many of you can remember the difference between 1st and 2nd and 3rd class mail?  Can you remember the last time the United States Post Office hired high school Juniors and Seniors to help with Christmas deliveries of Christmas Greeting Cards?  Was that change, or do we still do that but just don't get to see it any more because we're too old to look out the window?  How many of you can remember when the daily newspaper was delivered to your home for six straight days for $0.15?  Better yet, how many of you remember the trauma it caused when the price went to $0.25 for the same service?Now that I think some more about it, it's been so long since I have bought a newspaper that I can't believe there's been any change at all.  Except that I don't read newspapers any more.  I got over that habit when I lived in a third world country where newspapers didn't reach out further than the government building anyway.  There was no "news" in them either because reporting was against the law.  I could go on and on, but I'll leave it up to you to wait for the next time this email will rattle your CRT.  Right now I am going to propose what can be done to save this country ship loads of money with a minimum of discomfort.  I mean, besides recalling the military home.
The Post Office has to go.  Three year plan.  1. By end of fiscal year 2011-2012 (June 30, 2012) absolutely no more "junk mail."  If you want to advertise, use Craigslist.  2.  By the same time, delivery on Tuesday through Saturday, only and only in  urban areas the definition of which I leave up to those smarter than I.  3. By June 30, 2013, No more Saturday delivery.  4. By June 30, 2014, bye, bye.  Gone.  Don't tell me it can't be done.  If you want more paper, buy another fax machine.
Along with the absolute abolition of junk mail, all franking privileges will be abolished as well.  If the government is going to continue taking bribes from insurance, pharma, comm, oil, etc.  let 'em use the bribe money to get their lies disseminated.  That's what's happening now with the TV and such.  They don't need mail.
You don't really want to know what I think about the rest of this "memo" do you?  There are some interesting thoughts in my brain about some of this stuff.   I have lived in some rather unique places under some rather interesting conditions.  I'm able to tell you all that there are MANY things that we could do without in this country and still be comfortably happy.  But I'm getting long winded here, so I'll spare you.  Maybe I'll mail you a $0.32 post card.  


I'll end with the change that just hit Apple computer today with the de-mission of  Steve Jobs.  Don't worry, Apple will be around as long as Microsoft has a well that needs poisoning.  


That's it for now.

NO ONE READS IT ANYWAY -- #1 SON ABOUT "365 THOUGHTS"

No one reads it anyway.  That's what I heard about the blog that you, being someone is reading.  You And 1,670 others in the short time that this has been public.  In the short time that I have been on this earth I have come to the conclusion that whatever is written will someday be read.  I grew up in a place where there were newspapers competing for eyeballs every day.  There were English Language newspapers, Polish Language newspapers, Chinese Language newspapers and French Language newspapers.  Some one had to be reading them.  I remember that every weekend we would have two New York City newspapers in our house.  They featured great colored comics sections and a Sunday Magazine.  I remember very vividly one Sunday when the magazine cover had some scantily clad cheer leaders and our baby brother who was all of about 7 or 8 made the "woo-woo" sound.  Even my overly modest mother laughed at that.  Print survived because people read.  The Internet is popular because it presents so many choices to be read.  Ideas abound.  (Maybe not here, but they're out there somewhere.)
As human beings we have a drive to get a glimpse inside one another's heads.  We want to know what the other person is thinking.  We are driven to validate our own opinions.  We do that most easily when a person lays it out in black and white rather than to keep it covered inside his/her coconut. Reading is like being at a car race, rather than at a horse race.  What's the difference?  I never met anyone who would go to a horse race to see a crash.  You?  When we read we are always looking for the "Gotcha" moment [crrasshh] when we can firmly disagree with the author's position.  That's what I love about reading on the Internet.  If I read something that lights my fire, man, it's like, comment, comment, comment.  I always put my name too.  None of this anonymous, light a firecracker and run away stuff.  I want you to know that someone is enjoying the clash of opinion, whether or not you intended to cause a clash.  So don't tell me that "no one reads it anyway."  I know that someone is reading it because my computer tells me so...and...the comment box does too.  And remember to put your real name because "anonymity is the enemy of progress in truth."

IS IT NEWS? IS IT TRUE? WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

I have to talk about this because it is both humorous and serious.  I actually think about this rather often.  When the war ended in Europe, there was no big hoopla because we were still slugging it out against the Japanese.  Oh, we talked about it, but we were just little kids, I was only 8.  I remember I was at Dicky's house (Beauregard) on Smith Street and of course we were not talking politics or anything like that.  But we did get the news but it didn't stir us.  I do remember that it made me feel good because I had several uncles in Belgium and England and I had the feeling that they would be safer now.  When my father came home from work that night, he too was feeling better because his brothers would now be safer than before.

Something greater than that as far as causing an impact on my feelings was the death of FDR.  The picture on the right is a fair representation of the one that appeared in the local Holyoke Daily Transcript Telegram.  The picture of the president was transparent and the honor roll (Holyoke's honor roll, of course) was legible through the picture.  Like I said, I was only eight, but somehow this man's death impressed me.  I guess it could only be that he is the first president that I came to know growing up.  The other thing is that I was living in the middle of a community of dyed-in-the-wool democrats.  I didn't know what that meant either.  I know now, but it was still a mystery then.  I do remember that there was a somber mood all around me for a while, but it didn't really disturb me.  Not anywhere near as much as the death of my aunt Cécile a couple of years earlier.  But that is another story...the two Céciles in my life...and the Basilica in my favorite part of Rome.  Oh, boy!

Anyway, that's the thought until now.  So forward to the final point.

So now I am eight.  It is August.  My father and I go fishing very early in the morning.  It was an hour that my father always said was for crazy people.  So it was early.  We put the canoe on the car and drove off into the early morning dark, heading for a small lake where we knew there would be fish.  It was secluded, so it was nice.  We drifted and fished.  He for pickerel, I for pan fish.  He caught a couple of very nice ones.  He threw back at least three "small" ones. He was too proud to bring home anything less than 18 inches.  These two were all of that and more.  I had some pretty good sized pan fish too.  We had those for breakfast after sun-up.  We cleaned the breakfast site, packed the gear in the car and went back for a couple of hours of drifting, knowing that as the day wore on, we were out there purely for the relaxation of it.  Oh, we fished, but we knew that fish don't eat after 8:00 AM
It was therefore about noon or so when we put the canoe up and got on the road for the one hour trip back to the house.  A little after we got underway we went through a small residential area and there were people all over their yards and in the street, talking, laughing.  My father made a smart Aleck comment that I don't remember and he turned on the car radio.  It was but a few seconds before it became clear what had happened.  The Japanese had surrendered.  The war was over.  No wonder people were dancing in the streets.
The dancing in the streets became more intense as we approached more densely populated areas.  When we got to our town, the streets were full of adults and children beating on pots and pans, yelling, shouting and generally letting the Japanese know what had happened to them in no uncertain terms.  Those of you who have attained a "certain age" will notice that I am caving in to the proprieties of 21st century language when I talk about the J...'s!  There are those who know that in those days there were two "N" words.  You bet!
Anyway, that was quite a day, and of course, I will never forget it.  What I will never forget is what happened about one week later.  As the news of the wars slowly faded from the front pages of the newspaper, I announced to my father, "I don't think we will have any newspaper in September now that the wars are over."
My father looked at me and simply said, "Oh, I think they'll find something to write about."  I was amazed, but I trusted him.  He was right. Many times I wish that he had not been right.  Many times I think that we would be better off without the "papers."  We don't even need them to wrap fish any more, what with the plastics and all.  So now all I have to say is, we kicked their ass with guns and bombs, but they are kicking our ass in so many other ways.  They melted all their "Zeroes" into cars that have been sinking ours for years.  Turn about is fair play.  Hai'! Dozo...