Happy Birthday Anthony!

 Today is the 209th birthday of one of my favorite authors, Anthony Trollope.  Yes, on April 24, 1815, Trollope was born in London.  A contemporary of Charles Dickens, he would never match Dickens' fame, but Trollope was a respected and popular author in his own right.  What's more amazing, he was a prolific writer while continually holding down a day job with the Royal Mail.  In fact, Anthony Trollope was responsible for the design of the familiar English pillar box postal collection container.  But mainly, he is known for his multitude of novels that examine class struggle, politics, and labor conditions of the Victorian age.  Among his many novels, my favorite is Doctor Thorne, which encompasses all these familiar themes, overlaid by warnings against the excesses of alcoholism. During a 2019 trip to London, I visited Trollope's grave in Kensal Green Cemetary, and there gave him my thanks for the many hours of enjoyment I've derived from his work.  Happy Birthday, Anthony!

STFU

 To mark just-concluded National Book Day, late night host Jimmy Kimmel shared these wise words from real librarians.  As a resident of a twisted, misguided state that seeks to criminalize the actions of librarians - librarians - I am embarrassed for the right-wing nutjobs who see information as a threat to their lives.  I hope some day these sad, sad people at last realize that mere ideas aren't a danger to their well being.

The Secret Life of Nostalgia

 At my age, a fond remembrance of the past is natural and understandable.  And it occurred again just days ago, when I discovered that a favorite television series of mine from the late 1980s is available to view on YouTube.  The show was called The Secret Life of Machines, and featured Tim Hunkin and his sidekick Rex Garrod.  In the three seasons of the show, Hunkin explained the basic working principles of common, everyday items we all use.  The automobile, the vacuum cleaner, the refrigerator, the television.  And so on.  Delivered in a charmingly unpolished and casual style, using clever but simple demonstration devices, and peppered with delightfully crude animated sequences, Hunkin conveyed the principles of all the machines we use without thinking about, and have never considered the history that led to their present day form.  I loved watching the show on my local PBS television station over 30 years ago, so I was thrilled to recently learn that Hunkin has himself released all episodes of the show in remastered form on his YouTube channel.  And following each episode, Tim himself makes a few comments about what went into filming that episode, or what has become of the technology over the past decades.  I'm now working my way through all the episodes and enjoying the memories that have come flooding back.

Weeks, not months

 As an avid fan of postal mail, I have traditionally held a positive opinion of the US Postal Service.  With its long and interesting history, it is now by far the largest postal system in the world.  Over 44% of the world's mail is processed by the USPS, and in 2022 the USPS delivered 127.3 billion (B, for BILLION) pieces of mail.  As an active postal customer for decades, I have recently seen delivery performance drop off noticeably.  Most obvious is my weekly typed letter to my mother, which I typically write on Sunday evenings, and is a sort of regular weekly update on my life.  Mailed on Monday morning from central Alabama, it would reliably reach her in suburban Chicago on Thursday.  Used to, anyway.  After a couple years of semi-annual rate hikes, the delivery performance has slowed considerably.  My letters now arrive on Friday on a good week.  The following Monday is quite common.  And parcels that I order from online stores that have tracking info clearly reveal the disgraceful state of USPS Priority Mail service.  This was once advertised as "2-day" service and usually lived up to the promise.  Now days, it's commonly four or five days.  Then, to further accentuate the decline, today I received a postcard sent to me by a relative from their vacation to the US Virgin Islands...that they mailed the week before last Christmas.  I'm not the only one who has noticed the abysmal state of mail service in this country.  Two days ago, USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy appeared before a congressional hearing to explain the poor performance of the service he oversees.  At the Senate hearing, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) excoriated Trump appointee DeJoy about his poor performance.

"You don't have months to fix 36 percent of mail being delivered on time," Ossoff countered. "I've got constituents with prescriptions that aren't being delivered. I've got constituents who can't pay their rent and their mortgage. I've got businesses who aren't able to ship products or receive supplies."

While I recognize few people today use the USPS for actual personal correspondence, it still provides a vital service for delivering documents and parcels to all parts of the country.  And as dismal as things may be right now, it could be worse.  But I certainly hope congressional pressure will drive DeJoy to improve the situation, or failing that, remove him and replace him with someone who can.

Taste of the Masters

 I'm not much of a golf fan, but when I was invited to a Masters Golf Tournament party this past Sunday, I couldn't pass up the chance.  You see, the party would feature a Taste of the Masters kit, which features all the traditional fare from the actual golf course food kiosks over at Augusta National Golf Club.  It is a famously quaint feature of these food vendors that their prices have not increased in decades.  So the tournament spectators this weekend (they are pointedly called "patrons" by the club) could nibble on a Southern classic pimento cheese sandwich for just $1.50.  Astonishingly inexpensive, as major sporting event venues go, these days.  So while I tackled my steep golf learning curve, I nibbled on delicious sandwiches, caramel corn, and potato chips, just as the patrons at Amen Corner were doing on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Eclipse this

 I live in a part of the country where we expect only about an 85% eclipse of the sun.  Add to that some increasing high clouds just as the eclipse began, and it's not a terribly impressive event around here.  But I did notice on my home weather station that the sun and UV sensor did record the event.  You can see the dramatic drop-off of both as the eclipse reached its peak at 2 pm, local time.  So far, no dramatic consequences of the moon moving in front of the sun.  No outbreaks of zombies, or other catastrophes.  Just an odd mid-day reduction in the sky's brightness.

Lost in the mail

 I begin to suspect there may be a problem with wider participation in National Letter Writing Month.

Oh, hail!

 Springtime in central Alabama means strong storms, occasional tornadoes, and the potential for large hail.  Last night, all three were in the forecast, so it was time for me to deploy my vehicle hail protector, or as my wife calls it, the "bounce house".  Since I haven't yet figured out how to fit three cars in our two-car garage, my daily driver Chevy Malibu stays outside.  I have a cover that protects it from damaging UV rays during the weekends when I don't drive the vehicle, but last night more was required.  Thus, Hail Protector.  This is basically a two layer car cover, with a fan that blows air between the layers to create a cushion that protects against falling hailstones.  After some time spent to assemble the device and learn how to efficiently install it, I can now deploy it in about 15 minutes.  So last evening, I had it in place before the expected storms.  It turned out to be a false alarm, and fortunately there was no severe weather in our area.  But should the risk of damaging hail again loom, I will be ready with my bounce house.

Write on

 No foolin' - today begins National Letter Writing Month.  For the next thirty days, we are urged to make an effort to send good old fashioned postal mail to our family and friends.  This is something I've strived to do for the past several years.  With varied success.  The goal is to each day create one personal missive to be mailed to a lucky recipient, thereby reviving an age-old method of communication.  For many, the ritual of composing of a physical, hand written (or in my case, often typewritten) letter, note or card recalls pleasant memories of a slower, simpler time.  There is still something about receiving a physical personal letter that no intangible, digital communication can match.  Direct, personal, and durable, written letters cannot be replaced or will ever entirely vanish.  The amateur historian in me also values written correspondence as an invaluable record of history.  So much of what we know about people in our past comes to us from a written record.  So this month, I pledge to once again make an effort to send at least one letter each day, and in doing, revive some relationships that have flagged, despite digital connections that sometimes are overwhelming.  Perhaps you who read this will be a lucky recipient of a letter I write this month; write one to me, and you can definitely expect one in reply.

Pandemic memories

 In the corner of the entrance to my laboratory building lies a neglected and forgotten relic of the recent worldwide pandemic.  This month, four years ago, the saga of Covid began in this country and would severely test the social structure of the nation.  That first weekend of March 2020, my wife and I were on one of our frequent long weekend trips to New York city to see a Broadway show.  Early news stories at that time had just begun to describe a new viral illness, with cases being detected on the west coast, and mere days before our trip, in upstate New York.  With little concern, we went ahead with the trip and spent several days roaming around Manhattan taking few additional precautions over our normal routines.  We enjoyed being in the audience of a performance of The Lehman Trilogy, viewing what would be virtually the last performance of that wonderful show.  The Monday after that first March weekend, we flew home.  Less than a week later, Broadway closed and the city of New York locked down.  Thus began a public health crisis that would test the nation's resolve and resourcefulness.

Today, happily, the situation is much improved.  The past four years seem to be both a blink of the eye and an eternity.  The anachronistic sign that stands forgotten in a corner of my building is a souvenir of those difficult days as we struggled to deal with this new illness.  What the crisis revealed about society is both heartening and dismaying.  We saw the endless and largely unappreciated dedication of healthcare workers on the front lines of the fight against this new, insidious illness.  We also came to belatedly appreciate the value of the unsung members of society, the grocery store workers, restaurant servers, and all those in constant contact with the public who provide crucial services.  With more disappointment, however, we saw with clear vision the utter and complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican party.  From the party leader and nation's president on down to local government, the GOP failed the nation with its endless obstruction of virtually every public health measure from masks to vaccines to social distancing, the vilification of scientists as they struggled valiantly (and sometimes imperfectly) to understand this new pathogen, to the belligerent, cultish adoption of unproven treatments and medications that were mere defiant emblems more than they were useful countermeasures to the disease.  So now, four years later, the nation and the world stands, scarred but hopefully wiser and better prepared for challenges to come.