Year-End Stats

First of all, let me get this off my chest. Mexico is decidedly not the country to go to get postcards. What precious few I could find were faded, curled, sandy, and cost more than a taco. I bought them anyway, though they did not substantially add to my collection. (It costs less to buy a set of 20 Mark Rothko postcards at a MUSEUM than to pick up seven dirty nasty ones in a village near Puerto Vallarta.)

Not that this forbodes anything. While the end of December showed a sharp decline in my sending and receiving, I plan to spend 2013 trying to beat my 2012 record.

Now for the stats. Through the U.S. postal service:

• I sent 200 postcards in 2012 and received 120.
• I wrote more than 90 cards and letters and received at least 68 in return.
• I didn't send a single Christmas card and my loved ones didn't hold it against me: I still got 20 holiday cards.

Not even counting the few packages that were shipped and received, this amounts to more than $182.50 in the Postal Service's coffers. Actually, it's way more, since many of you are not nearly as thrifty as I am, and put 45-cent stamps on postcards plus double or triple the number of stamps needed on a letter. Good job.

We did well, my friends. Let's continue the trend and make it a hobby in 2013!

So What

Just click on this link and press play and give it a listen.

http://www.beyondtheperf.com/miles-davis-edith-piaf/

Read the beautiful timeline of the paralleling lives of Miles Davis and Edith Piaf. Listen to "So What," that legendary Miles tune, as you peruse this page.

Don't stop till you reach the bottom, where you'll read ... well, here's just a sample - never enough - like a riff of Miles or a refrain of Edith:

"Like music, stamps speak an international language - an idea fully expressed when two nations agree to a joint issue. The U.S. Postal Service and La Poste, the French postal administration, are proud to present two stamps that cross borders, cultures, and generations -- Edith Piaf and Miles Davis."

Then go buy your own damn stamps and send me a letter. (If you can send it to me from France, I'll love you even more.)

The Small and the Brief

There is not enough praise for smallness in this world, for brevity.

We tend to think bigger is better. Baby grand vs. spinet. Four-bedroom vs. cottage. Ford F150 vs. Toyota Tacoma. Supersize vs. small fries. 

Whatever happened to less is more? The spinet requires less dusting and space; the four-bedroom, more maintenance (and dusting!); the Tacoma is easier to park and the Supersize? Well. We all know what happened to the Supersize.

As we began our teacher inservices last week, I received some praise. More than one person mentioned they liked the way I'm so vocally time-conscious at faculty and IEP meetings; I keep everyone on track, so our meetings are short. You know when comic strip characters feel proud, little rays emanate off of them in arced lines, sometimes tipped in stars? That's what I looked like walking around all afternoon. Beaming. 

As I drove home from work, anticipating the students' return to school (a Thursday start, those two days so brief and breezy), I admired the fuel efficiency of my compact Versa and thought it was time to [concisely] list some little things I love. 

Smaller everything.

Bichon Frises (I used to want a Lab). 

2nd graders (I used to like high-schoolers) (That's a bald-faced lie - I've always preferred non-hormonal people who are shorter than me).

My temper (no, wait, I don't mean it's shorter - that would be scary - but I don't lose it as often, which is some kind of shrinking, right?).

A novella by Julian Barnes (163 pages) (read in an afternoon). Compare this to an 849-page novel by an author I won't embarrass by naming (I'm speaking of you, "Richard Bachman") (in three weeks of my life that I wouldn't mind having back).

My flash drive. To store anything approaching 4gb in 1988, you needed a whole refrigerated room full of disks the size  of car wheels.

The size of your thumb.

14 " (and about 10 lbs).

The distance across the state in which I live (SC: 273 miles; TX: 821 miles). (What makes that special? Mountains to the sea in 3 hours or less!)

My cellphone's better than Gordon Gekko's.

The time it takes the USPS to get a letter from South Carolina to Colorado: 1,800 miles in 2 days.

and…

Postcards. 

Duh.

(I really, really like the word "duh.")

Picture Postcard Ouray

Although I grew up in California, I spent part of every childhood summer in Ouray, Colorado, nestled in the San Juan Mountains. Most of my mom's relatives either lived there year-round or stayed part of their summers, too. So I ran around with first and second and third cousins, daring to wade into the rapid Uncompahgre River, teetering over the swinging bridge, climbing to Box Cañon, swimming in the hot springs pool, setting off firecrackers, and getting the occasional spanking for it. 

On Fourth of July, thousands of tourists filled the tiny town's streets. My Aunt Karen never failed to grumble and call them "turkeys." Uncle Jack and Uncle Bus fought in the crowd-pleasing water fight - an event where teams blast streams of water from high-pressure fire hoses to try and beat their opponents into submission. Uncle Jack and Uncle Bus won year after year.  

What's more, my family has history there. My mom's people came over from Italy in the early 1900s to work in Ouray's productive mines. Decades later, my Grandpa Fay and Uncle Jack were the last of the gold miners in our family. The mines in the surrounding mountains are now closed, the outbuildings historic landmarks. Even the house where my mom grew up - a turn-of-the-century two-story her family called the baracca (Italian for "hovel" or "shanty") - looks like Doc Holliday might walk out of it any minute. 

What with all that history, extended family, and my intimate knowledge of its gravel back streets, I got away with considering myself a Ouray local. 

Nowadays, I spend a week with my parents nearly every summer. They live about 40 minutes from Ouray, in the forgiving valley that gets about one-fourth as much snow in winter. When I visit, we spend at least a day in Ouray, hiking a 5-mile trail around its perimeter and eating lunch somewhere on Main. It's impossible not to run into a relative or two, or one of my mom's high school classmates. 

Though this makes me feel at home there, let's be honest - I'm not. My camera is perpetually around my neck. I'm shooting photo after photo after photo. I go in the Columbine Gift Shop. I buy postcards and silver baubles. I look at vacation rentals and dream.

If there's a more picturesque town in the country, I haven't seen it. Surrounded on three sides by 13,000-foot snowcapped peaks, a person could stand at the intersection of 6th and Main and make a living taking pictures for postcard companies. (Well. As long as she lived somewhere else. To own a house in Ouray you're not grandfathered into, you pretty much need to make an Oprah Winfrey type living. But I digress.)

Gobble Gobble.

On my recent trip, I scooped up dozens of postcards after the annual perimeter hike. I also made a point of visiting the tiny little Post Office (to buy postcard stamps I didn't even need). I stood in a line three people deep. All three were picking up parcels too big for their P.O. boxes, and the postmistress knew each of them by name. When I reached the counter and she said, "What can I do for you, ma'am," I realized just how hard I was working to fit in.

It hit me like a slap. I've become one of Aunt Karen's much-loathed "turkeys." But you know what?  It's worth it, for a day in Ouray.

Is Friendship Really Dead?

Aware of my particular interest, people who are better read than I (and you know who you are, Dan) have lately mentioned blogs, opinion pieces, news articles, and other online musings about the state of the U.S. Postal Service. Andrew Sullivan's The Dish gave readers a forum to weigh in on the USPS Crisis at least five times last year. 

In one of those, a reader mentioned Senator Claire McCaskill's suggestion that "there is a longing out there right now, especially in these uncertain times, for some of the things that have provided stability over the years." Joe Lieberman chimed in, "We should be writing more passionate letters to those we love."

Sullivan's astute reader then offered this priceless opinion:

Does McCaskill live in 2011, or 1950? The personal letter is DEAD. Everyone calls, texts or emails the ones they love, or they Skype. It’s like saying that cars and gasoline are too expensive, so let’s start a campaign to get more people to ride horses.

The New Yorker gets it.

Meanwhile, another friend (okay, it, too, was Dan) posted this link to an article in the Times: Friends of a Certain Age. In case you're disinclined, as I am, to read too much in one day, I'll summarize: the older we get, the harder it is to make friends. (It's a good article by Alex Williams. You should read it yourself. There are loads of funny examples, like the woman with 857 Facebook friends and 509 Twitter followers who couldn't get enough people together to celebrate her 39th birthday.)

The article also reminded me of that experience - you know the one - where you're hanging out with someone cool, finishing each other's sentences, laughing your heads off, and then everything comes to a screeching halt when one of you says, "Let's do this again sometime." Blackberries are consulted - on rare occasions, among my fellow Luddites, notebooks are whipped out - dates are tossed, and sometime between dessert and calculating the tip, a mutually agreeable date is discovered.

And it's sometime in February 2014.

Having read the two pieces back to back - Andrew Sullivan's reader opinion and Alex William's article -  they merged in my brain to form one disturbing question: Is friendship, like the personal letter, DEAD?

Nay, I say, nay. Or perhaps, only if you let it be. The evidence is in, the jury is out, the verdict is clear, I've been saying it all along: we can't sustain friendships - not the meaningful ones, anyway - exclusively through email and social media.

If we live too far apart, or our schedules are just so hectic that we no longer feel like B.F.F.'s but K.O.F.'s ("Kind of Friends"), then what other choice do we have?

Don't Skype your friend. Write him an old-fashioned letter. Maybe invite her to save gas with you and go for a horseback ride.

Even if it's just for old times' sake.

100th Anniversary!

To call it an "anniversary" is misleading in every possible way, but "100th Postcard Sent!" didn't have quite the right punch.

Just the latest batch of postcards.

It's true! I've sent my hundredth postcard. I've run out of 29-cent+2-cent+1-cent stamps! I can now admit that I had my doubts when I started last January as to how long I'd stick with it.  A hundred stamps just felt daunting. How long it would take me to send 100 postcards? All year? Two years? Half a year? How many times would the Post Office raise the rates before I ran out?

Well, it feels like an accomplishment of some kind to have used them up in 209 days. It makes me smile to think of those hundred postcards out there, sitting on my friends' and relatives'  desks or taped to their refrigerators (or lining their recycle bins).

Pretty little bag o' stamps.

And then there's this! I started something at New Year's and kept at it for more than a week - that alone might be a first.

But is it over? Oh no, it's only just begun. I've restocked my postcard supply at grocery stores and airports and gift shops from South Carolina to Alaska. I went into my local post office and purchased several sheets of the fabulous 32-cent Aloha stamps, along with 50 Forever stamps for those fat long letters I sometimes write. In fact, I bought so many different kinds of stamps they had to put them in a sack for me - and it was as pretty as the stamps are.

Let's see how long it takes me to get to 200 postcards, shall we?

WheresGeorge.com

Paul found a dollar bill in the parking lot of PetSmart the other day. He was about to pocket it. “See a dollar, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck!” I sang, then added, “Inflation.” Before sliding it into his wallet, he noticed some red printing all over it.

“Track this bill at www.WheresGeorge.com” it said. “Make this bill’s history. Track where it goes.” Of course we dashed home so Paul could look up his dollar. We learned the bill came from the wonderful gals at Arthur State Bank. “Send him far” was their online note, the idea being that once you’ve found and logged and tracked George, you drop him somewhere to see where he winds up next.

We saw how far George had traveled. In one year, 149 days, 23 hours, and 17 minutes, George had gone 8.0 miles. That’s an average of 0.02 miles per day.

Pitiful, right?

I naturally thought it was time to get the U.S. Postal Service involved. How else will George ever make it out of Columbia? Today Paul is mailing the bill to some lucky recipient. 

Who out there will be the chosen one?