About the Possibility of Writing and Posting Retro-Blog Articles

I've been working on this blog of mine since April of 2007, which is well over eighteen years ago...a long time.  Yet I wonder about whether earlier daily journaling, preserved up to the present day, would have been a preferable writing habit.  My memory is still pretty good, albeit with some gaps regarding specific, detailed information.  There are times in my past when I built up some vivid memories of the then-ongoing events and how I handled them.  Times in high school, college, and at theme parks or the post office are all worth documenting, along with my takes on them.  If you access this blog and see the "first" entry going all the way back to March, 1973, you might conclude that I'm suffering from temporal delusions...I just don't write "today I ran the two-mile race relatively fast but finished dead last" in November, 2025 while posting the comment back to the date I experienced it all.  Still, just for the fun of it, I think this just might be worth the effort...

Self-Imposed Structure and Discipline an Issue So Far in Retirement

I'm writing this a little past 1 PM on a weekday that I normally would be driving to work had I not retired late last year after 37 years.  I'd be in the post office parking lot, no doubt eventually finding a free space somewhere in the disastrous mess that postal management created after they moved all the carriers into the processing plant on SW 34th Street.  Although if still employed I wouldn't be looking forward to being in that fishbowl of a building with all its peepholes and cameras and obnoxious "career" ladder-climbing supervisors trying to act tough, my mind and actions to a significant extent would be free to venture down whatever paths I felt inclined to follow.  The intermittent fasting that led to a heightened level of fitness and athleticism in 2023-24 (and was hinted at as being an "eating disorder" by loved ones) was able to take place under a work routine that saw me free from undue pressure by others to ravenously consume food.  I'd like to return to at least a modified version of that regimen, but I need to respond to the clearly different cues presenting themselves to me during these times of zero job-imposed structure.  For one, my priority is to include Melissa in as many activities that I can...but in the times she doesn't feel like going along I need to continue with my agenda while being sympathetic to her feelings.  People's moods and emotions fluctuate over the course of any day, and so do mine.  Each of them can speak for themselves...but not necessarily for me, although I welcome their input.  It does me little good to listen to podcasts from Rob Dial or Andrew Huberman about instilling self-discipline and structure if I get static for being proactive and showing up.  Being inclusive of others is not at all the same as depending on direction from them. My inclination is to make living simpler in a material sense and to avoid making mountains out of molehills.  Living in the present, or mindfulness, is the opposite of overthinking.  How about some mindfulness...and a little gratitude for the blessings in our lives? As for responsible activity, I think it's better to get little habits going to the point where "good living" just naturally becomes a part of my daily existence, instead of shutting down my life to focus on a specific massive maintenance or clean-up project (directed by someone else). I've learned over the past sixteen months with two tragic family deaths and three different cancer diagnoses that life is indeed fragile and we're all subject to eventual death in this world, and I value the present moments accorded me, aware that I don't know far ahead they will stretch out. I do my share of complaining about the news, but this is the time of my life. No, I'm far from perfect and have a long way to go. But I don't think that I'm being unreasonable to ask for a little consideration and respect when I am earnestly seeking to live in a disciplined and structured manner as I approach my 69th birthday...

The Fallacy of the Dead-End Job

If you're an advocate of the practice of mindfulness, then you just might not need to read this piece about how some of us put down our own employment status as "dead-end".  I recently heard, second-hand, about a loved one who has expressed that her current job was dead-end, with no real prospects for growth.  It was a striking criticism, for I had gleaned from her previous descriptions of her work life that she enjoyed the relative autonomy that the daily routine granted her.  It's a position that demands some physical fitness and endurance...lots of walking!  I think I might have liked that kind of work were I her age...but I get at least her "old" way of looking at work: it paid the bills, she could get through the work day without being bullied by managers or co-workers and when she left, she was done and free for the rest of the day.  I've always worked for the same things and never rated a job as "dead-end" or depriving me of growth...about which I think she meant "opportunities for promotion".  I worked at the US Postal Service for 37 years and had ample opportunities to seek entry into management.  But I was consistently focused on treating each workday as an opportunity to perform my duties well, and when I clocked out at the end of the shift, I was satisfied and went on to what was next for me.  I totally understand that people have differing ideas about ambition and climbing status ladders in their respective fields of employment...a lot of it has to do with cultural values and family structure, as well as with being around certain more alpha-personality types that promote such outlooks and who may be intent on exerting undue pressure. I've encountered some of these pushy folks whose idea of getting to know me is centered around where I rate according to their scale of respect...and that means how prestigious (or not) is my job title and how much money I make on it.  I don't owe anyone an explanation for my motives in job selection, but any revelation from them that they feel entitled to negatively judge me accordingly quickly and automatically condemns them as unworthy of friendship and respect. Back when I first started working for the USPS, they hired...outside the standard-practice sequence of the register list of candidates according to their exam scores...the son of a current supervisor.  He was arrogant with an entitlement mentality, and performed his assigned tasks sloppily, but escaped discipline because of his connections.  Well, one day he came to work full of the advancement promises that being an Amway member gave him.  With Amway, the important thing is to get people "under you", through which you get a cut of their sales profits.  His idea was that eventually he could live effortlessly through the efforts of those supporting him.  Fine if that works, but his sales pitch to us coworkers was that it was better than this "dead-end job" we were doing.  That aroused some offense from me and a colleague, and the matter was squelched among us.  A couple of years later that dude was fired for outright insubordination...since his "daddy" supervisor had already retired, he was no longer under that umbrella of protection and they were only too eager to get rid of this troublemaker.  So that's where I stand whenever someone starts playing the "it's a dead-end job" hand.  Do whatever you want as long as it's legal and you do no harm to others, but leave me alone if you're going to use that bullshit excuse for an argument...

Happy Income Tax Deadline Day

April 15, Tax Day, has come and is about to end for 2025.  Having worked for the post office here in Gainesville for 37 years before last year's retirement, I am well acquainted with the extraordinary measures they would take on this day, with SW 34th Street traffic backed up from the main processing plant's entrance as folks would wait to the last minute to file their taxes, and then dump off their returns at night to get them postmarked "in time" before midnight.  Nowadays, of course, we have software to do most of the tedious work and calculations while payments can come electronically out of our bank accounts or refunds likewise deposited into them.  Melissa and I, because of the tragic circumstances in 2024 with our family, had more difficulty than usual with our filing, but we somehow managed to get it all finished with several days to spare.  I remember back in Trump's first term when he was pushing his own vision of tax "reform" through Congress and Ted Cruz opined that filing one's income tax should be simple enough to do on the back of a postcard.  To which I would offer one of my rare "thumbs up" to the junior senator from Texas.  In any event, it's over for another year...

Weekly Short Stories: 1988 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I begin reviewing 1988 science fiction short stories from the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1989 Annual World's Best SF, featuring the editor's picks from the previous year.  For me 1988 marked my first full year working at the Gainesville post office, in the specialized capacity of a letter sorting machine clerk working the late-night, early-morning shift.  I think I can confidently say that I enjoyed that assignment and actually miss working on that machine, which has been long replaced nationwide by automated letter sorting machines.  But back then each of us (twelve consoles per machine) would sit there keying the destination codes for each letter as it passed in front of us, 50-60 per minute.  The fact that I could listen to the radio on my headset made it even better, initially focusing on my local country station and then switching over time to Rock-104.  Good times, good times...that was back when Gainesville's mail processing was done at the Downtown Station, situated across the street from the public library.  But enough of my old job, let's look at those stories...

THE GIVING PLAGUE by David Brin

This is an especially relevant story in today's backdrop of COVID-19, different evolving strains and vaccines.  Here a new blood-borne virus has been detected, and it owes its own survival and propagation to the effect it has on its carriers: altruism, crystallized in the desire to donate blood.  An ambitious and unscrupulous medical scientist narrates this story as he tries to wrest credit from the actual discoverer while trying to determine the scope of this new scourge...

PEACHES FOR MAD MOLLY by Steven Gould

In a not-so-distant future marked by overpopulation and a virtual autocratic police state ruled by those with wealth and privilege...you know, where we're heading...skyscrapers live up to their name as a new subculture thrives on the outer walls, hundreds of stories from the ground where a single false step brings a very long fall and death.  The protagonist has a special mission: pick up supplies from a lower floor...and bring back some fresh peaches for one of his co-dwellers.  But there's a hitch:  twenty of the floors along his way (on the building's outside) are controlled by a hostile gang...and among them is his nemesis.  Exciting plot and a clever premise...

SHAMAN by John Shirley

In yet another dystopian future scenario, a technologically advanced police state has created a social withdrawal to localized gang-controlled sectors in the big cities.  Quinn, accompanied by his group of Cisco, Zizz and Bower, must pass through an urban zone occupied by a militant Muslim gang to get to the "Middle Man" on the way to rescuing a social activist from the controlling government's tightly run skyscraper prison.  The Middle Man has his own ideas about how to fight back against authoritarianism, and they reminded me much of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods....

SHRÖDINGER'S KITTEN by George Alex Effinger

A young Middle Eastern woman keeps reliving one disturbing scene in her life where she waits overnight in a hometown alleyway to stab (or not stab) a young man who will enter it just before dawn and sexually assault her (or try to).  This alternates with flashes forward when she is an assistant to German physicist Werner Heisenberg, author of his Uncertainty Principle and one of the leaders of the Nazi project to develop an atomic weapon during World War II.  It was hard for me to figure out this tale, with all the jumping back and forth and all, but I guess the main point is the woman tying in Heisenberg's discoveries with her own experiences...which reminded me of the protagonist in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five getting "unstuck in time"...only here it happens in multiple universes... 

Next week: more from Wollheim's '88 anthology...

Mail-In Voting

I happen to be a United States Postal Service employee and have been since 1987...I'm in the clerk craft section of operations and have always been involved in mail processing .  I don't intend with this article to get into its recent policies under the direction of new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, but I realize that with the current heated debates going on nationwide about expanded mail-in voting due to the COVID-19 epidemic screwing around with all our lives, I may have to refer to the USPS a little in passing...but it's not the gist of what I want to write about today.  No, I want instead to address the different perspectives that people on different political sides have about the process of voting and how this has influenced their views on today's questions...

Regrettably, in the United States...especially in the Jim Crow Deep South states...there is a history of voter suppression of different demographic groups, especially of blacks, intended to keep them out political power and in an underclass state.  After the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, the measures taken to disenfranchise certain prospective voters...such as poll taxes and literacy tests...have been outlawed...but there is still a sense nowadays that one side of the political equation wants to reduce the presence of blacks, who tend to overwhelmingly vote Democratic, at the voting booth.  So you see the accusations flying whenever Republican state legislators and governors sign into law new voter identification bills that reputedly are designed to protect the electoral process from voter fraud but are seen by the other side as discriminatory and an end-around to the Voting Rights Act.  Also, Trump's objections to the universal mail-in voting proposed in light of the coronavirus pandemic have been portrayed as voter suppression as well...he alleges there would be mass fraud with ballots flooding the mail system, many unasked for.  The President has stated that voting is an act that should involve an effort on the part of the voter...and in this I am in agreement with him.  To me, the more passive a voter is come election day the more able his or her vote can be manipulated by outside parties, thereby distorting the will of the people.  An example is this notion of ballot harvesting, illegal in most states but not in California.  In the 2018 congressional election held in that state there were a number of House seats that looked to be close Republican victories but after the "harvested" votes...overwhelming Democratic...were counted, they went to the other side.  Democratic Party operatives basically canvassed neighborhoods, avoiding registered Republican homes and going to those supporting their own party and collecting and delivering mail-in ballots to the elections offices.  Now the parties have always had their election day voting drives whereby they encourage voters and sometimes even drive them to the polling place and back...but you see, this still entails some sort of active effort on the part of the voter...

So in this discussion we're left with two seemingly conflicting philosophical approaches.  One side says voting should be as easily, effortlessly accessible as possible and the other says that it is an act of responsibility that necessarily involves initiative on the part of the voter.  As in most things there should be a reasonable middle ground...I think too passive of a voting electorate can tempt a destructive manipulation of the system while the rules for voting should be made careful to avoid making them too difficult for citizens in diverse groups to attain.  I like my Florida system of mail-in absentee voting whereby I take the active step and request a ballot either online or by phone or mail.  In California, on the other hand, they have flooded their state with ballots while in Texas one has to meet special criteria to vote absentee...even in the midst of this pandemic.  Only nine states currently have universal vote-by-mail, but the Democrats in Washington want to nationalize this process with legislation that is being opposed by Trump and the Republicans...and this is sadly the convenient reason they're making such a big fuss about the Postal Service right now, not because they care all that much about the institution in itself. As I've said before, back in 2009-10 the Democrats had control over the Presidency and both houses of Congress and did nothing to help it with its financial troubles, part of which are caused by the shrinking first class mail volume brought on by the digital revolution and part of which are caused by a burdensome, massive (and unique) 75-year pre-retirement funding mandate passed and signed by the Republicans in 2006...

Primary Election Day Today in Florida

Today is primary election day for the state of Florida if you're planning on on-site, in-person precinct voting...Melissa and I mailed in our ballots several days ago and, thanks to Alachua County's online ballot-tracking feature, we are confident that the elections office received them and everything is in proper order to process them tonight in the count.  I've noticed that my county provides Business Reply postpaid ballots for voters while others...neighboring Gilchrist County, for example...don't and have the voters put a stamp on their ballots.  And I wonder whether this simple convenience (or lack) will influence relative voter turnout, we'll see.  If you applied for and received an absentee ballot, I recommend that you drop it off at the local elections office (in Gainesville it's at 515 North Main Street) instead of using the mail if you still want to vote that way...the one here will be open for drop-off until 7 pm.  If you have your absentee ballot but haven't sent it yet and want to instead vote in person, take it to your local precinct polling place and surrender it for a new one and vote there...or simply show up if you never applied for a mail-in ballot.  This election is just a primary yet will essentially decide who will be our Alachua County sheriff along with two school board seats and a state representative race.  And since the U.S. House of Representatives District 3 seat always goes Republican due to the demographics of our area, whoever wins that party's crowded and increasingly mud-slinging contest will almost surely be the next representative here.  No president, governor, state cabinet or United States senatorial races are on the ballot so it's not as "sexy" as the one we're facing on November 3rd...even then, Florida isn't holding gubernatorial or U.S. Senate races in 2020.  Since I applied for absentee ballots for the upcoming general election I'm probably going to continue to vote by mail during this pandemic...

I'm hearing all this hullabaloo about the postal service being attacked by Trump as if it's something new...not only has he been railing against my employer for years but the Republican Party has been trying to privatize it for decades.  They pushed through an onerous bill that President Bush signed into law in 2006 compelling the USPS to prefund all of its employees' retirement for the next 75 YEARS..a deliberately backbreaking measure that no American business had ever been forced to operate under.  Yet just three years later we had a Democratic president, Senate, and House and for the two years they controlled the federal government from 2009 through 2010 they did NOTHING to help us out.  And now the same people are clamoring about the how the good old post office is under attack...but I think the main reason they're concerned is because they see it as a threat to the plan for universal mail-in voting that they are promoting, something that is currently being practiced in only nine states and which in all likelihood will not expand nationwide this year, pandemic notwithstanding.  I have my own opinions about the subject of universal voting and voting in general that I plan to share in a future article...

December Mail Rush Upon Me Again

Well, the year has once again come around full circle and here I am in early December, a postal processing employee during the intensely busy Christmas season. I expect a very busy three weeks ahead of me as we are inundated with a seemingly endless amount of parcels to sort and send to their appropriate destinations. For I operate one of the parcel sorting machines at my local plant, along with my crew of eight other workers and a supporting cast of help from other parts of the facility.

Unfortunately, with the (what I consider very ill-advised) decision by upper-level postal management to move outgoing mail processing from Gainesville to Jacksonville after December, this is probably the last great Christmas mail rush I will be working. Unless, of course, I become one of those who end up excessed to Jacksonville or Tampa a few months from now as ALL of Gainesville's mail processing operations are transferred to those two cities.

There is a lot of uncertainty regarding where I will be working in the future, and what I will be doing. But whatever happens, I will still be a proud employee of a quality organization: the United States Postal Service, as well as an even prouder member, in my 25th year, of the best labor union in the nation: the American Postal Workers Union.

Since I may be working a lot of overtime (and sleeping overtime the following day), this blog may suffer a bit in the form of gaps. But rest assured, "constant reader" (with a tip of my hat to the great Stephen King), I'm keepin' the faith here: just you keep reading my drivel, O.K.?

Even if you just hit my blog and casually read it, go ahead and anonymously leave a comment (as long as it's not spam), especially if you have a criticism...

USPS Changing Due to Financial Crisis

The United States Postal Service is in the midst of tumult nationwide and here in Gainesville. Slated to run out of money sometime this month, drastic measures are currently being taken to dramatically consolidate processing, reduce the amount of employees by more than 200,000, and save money by closing hundreds of offices nationwide and severely reducing delivery standards. Those proposed standards reductions include ending the overnight delivery standard for first class mail within a specified area and changing from a six-day-a-week delivery system to only five days...or maybe even four...for mail delivery. The entire outgoing mail processing in the Gainesville plant will be transferred to Jacksonville at the end of this year, and the remainder of the processing here may close in about a year and a half (or sooner) due to consolidation plans. So someone mailing a letter in Gainesville to another location in Gainesville may soon see their letter taking several days to reach its destination! Might as well just drive across town and hand it in person...

We'll see what kind of staffing reductions will take place in Gainesville. With the loss of outgoing mail operations several employees will be excessed to other facilities at the close of the year (or sooner). Others will see their schedules and assignments changed. It looks like a very bumpy road ahead during the next couple of years for postal employees here in Gainesville and nationwide. And, I might say, for postal customers as well!

One of the causes for the financial trouble is self-evident: with the Internet's convenient online billing and payment, e-mail, and social networking sites, the volume of first class letters has plummeted. And with that drop in volume has come a drop in revenue. Also, Congress passed into law a few years ago a special provision, applying only to the Postal Service, that compels it to pre-fund its retirees' health care accounts each year, giving it automatic massive multi-billion-dollar deficits to overcome. To top this off, about $50 billion in past overpayments by the USPS to the federal government for its pension funds have yet to be compensated for. Leaving the USPS currently in a crisis of liquidity...