Priority update

 Just as I got home from a long week of work and was sitting down with my first TGIF beer, I got a phone call from Rob at the Pittsburg, Kansas post office.  He was responding to my online inquiry of a couple days ago about my wayward parcel.  Rob was very nice, and was as puzzled as I am about the path of my package that was destined to his town.  He asked about the contents of my package, and promised to put in some sort of official search request.  If my package can be found in wherever it is in Chicago, he says it will be manually pulled from the mail stream and be directly sent via air to Pittsburg.  I hope it can be located and this odyssey can be concluded.  Stay tuned.

Lost in space

 

I've written previously about the marked decline of the US Postal Service in recent years.  Rapid price increases accompanied by poorer service doesn't seem like a good business model to me.  However, even all that couldn't have prepared me for the atrocious episode I am about to relate, one which is not yet concluded.  And that's part of the problem.  On January 15, 2025 I mailed a small parcel to a recipient in the small southeastern Kansas town of Pittsburg.  The shipment in question was simply a letter and a USB memory stick, within a common Priority Mail® flat rate envelope.  I used the USPS Click-n-Ship web page to generate and print at home a shipping label in the USPS preferred format.  I dropped it off at my local post office, expecting delivery in the promised 2-3 days.  I remember a few years ago when Priority Mail was reliable and almost always met this service goal.  However, it is now 16 days later, and my package has not yet been delivered to a destination about 650 miles away.  If tracking information is to be believed, it is this morning further from being delivered than it was a week ago...when it was already over a week overdue.  I reproduce below the current tracking status as of a few minutes ago (click on the photo to enlarge it for better readability).  If it is to be believed, the package has travelled from my home town of Helena, AL to the processing center in nearby Birmingham.  From there it went to Memphis, TN, and then to St. Louis, MO.  Then it unaccountably took a quick side trip to Greensboro, NC for reasons I don't understand (though it was such a fast diversion, I suspect this may have just been some sort of tracking service glitch.)  After the quick side trip to Greensboro, it returned to St. Louis.  Then it continued on to the Kansas City, KS processing center, where it arrived Jan 22, or 4 days overdue. It then took three days to make the short journey to the Springfield, MO Distribution Center.  Getting close to delivery, I thought! But after a couple days, it returned to Kansas City, where it sat for three days!  And then, hoping against hope for an eventual delivery, I see this morning that tracking shows the package now in the Chicago, IL International Distribution Center.  Chicago seems like an odd route between central Alabama and southeastern Kansas.  And I have no idea about that worrying "International" part.  Is my package headed overseas?  Stay tuned!  I'll post updates as the adventure continues.  Two days ago, I contacted the USPS through their online form to inquire about lost packages, and have not yet received a response.  Until then, this is just absolutely pathetic performance on the part of the USPS.

An appeal for help

 This morning I learned the name of one of the many victims of the Los Angeles wildfires: Simon Vance.  The name resonated with me because he is my favorite audiobook narrator.  It is to Vance that I owe my longstanding deep love of the works of Charles Dickens; he was the narrator of Bleak House that I first listened to decades ago.  Since then, Simon Vance has been for me the voice of Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, Eliot, and Patrick O'Brian along with dozens of other authors.  You see, in my always solitary and often repetitive work, I resort to audiobooks to occupy the time.  Among book narrators, Simon Vance is simply the best.  He has an uncanny ability to create character voices - both male and female - that give life to every passage of dialog.  He has a true actor's capacity to express the emotion and feeling of every scene that I can't help thinking any author, even those long dead, would applaud.  It would be difficult to understate the impact Vance's exemplary work has had on my life for many years.

So I was particularly moved when I learned this morning that Vance was among the many who have lost their home to the southern California fires.  Not surprisingly, a friend of Vance and his wife has set up a GoFundMe page on their behalf to assist in their time of need.  In situations such as this, there are familiar excuses to not help out:  Celebrities are not deserving of help.  Living in that region of California, he is certainly rich.  He should have insurance that will fully and immediately make him whole.  But so strong is my respect and admiration for his work, I overcame these excuses and made a small contribution to the fund.  I mean, Vance is a prominent voice performer, but hardly a household name.  I have no idea what his personal financial or insurance situation is, but I won't begrudge him on that account.  No, he is simply an individual whose work I admire, and I felt called to demonstrate my appreciation by lending symbolic assistance in his time of need.

The fires in southern California are a tremendous tragedy.  For those who wish to help, there are many worthy and deserving aid organizations to which one can donate:  The American Red Cross, World Central Kitchen, and Los Angeles Animal Services are just a few examples.  But if you, like me, want to give direct help to an individual in need, please consider the Simon Vance GoFundMe page.

Snow Day

 

Two days ago, on Friday the 10th, we in the Birmingham metro area woke to a blanket of fresh white snow.  For this area of the country, this is a rare event that happens maybe once every other winter, at most.  Fortunately, this event was well predicted, which allowed nonessential workers like me to stay home and enjoy the scene from the warmth and safety of home.  Area roads were, for a time, icy and impassible.   So after the initial wonder at the falling flakes and a brief trek outside for few photos, I was able to concentrate on more pressing matters:  Postcrossing.   Houseguests and holiday activities have meant that I have not devoted much time to writing postcards lately.  And with my status as Alabama's #1 Postcrosser to defend, I have been trying to catch up on my postcards over the last couple days of this unplanned long weekend.  By tomorrow morning, Monday, I should have about 40 outgoing cards to drop in the mail.  That includes several to Canada!  The Canadian postal worker strike has been resolved, and the mail backlogs cleared, so the USPS and Postcrossing have both resumed sending postcards to Canada.  I have really come to enjoy the contemplation and ritual of drawing an international address, selecting a card appropriate for the recipient, placing stamps, writing a short message, and addressing the card before sending it off on its (sometimes) very long journey around the world.  Several cards I wrote this morning will be going to China, about as far away as possible on this globe of ours.  Well into my second decade of this hobby, I enjoy it even more than when I first started.

And that rare snow event that gave me the chance to catch up on my Postcrossing?  More cold weather and perhaps even snow is possible before the end of the month.  Get ready, USPS, for another pile of cards!  Write on. 

Milestones

 Overnight, a Postcrossing milestone was reached when the project recorded postcard number 80 million.  Averaging about 5 million postcards sent each year, the anticipation had been growing until the moment a card sent from the Netherlands to Germany was registered.  Postcrossing member jennyfluer won the contest to predict the actual moment card number 80,000,000 would be received.  It's a happy occasion for the 804,571 Postcrossing members from 201 different countries all around the world.  Write on!

2024 Postcrossing wrapup

 The final tabulation of my Postcrossing activity in 2024 is in, and it was a productive year.  In total, I sent 896 cards this year and received 915 cards.  This was enough to maintain my ranking as the 27th most active Postcrossing member among the 75,599 registered Postcrossing members in the USA.  I remain the #1 leading Postcrosser in Alabama.  To no surprise, Germany is the most active of all countries, receiving 27.9% of all cards I sent this year.  At the other end of the scale, there were many countries to which I sent a single card, including Moldova, Cyprus, and the United Arab Emirates.  I've been a Postcrossing member for over twelve years, and the fun hasn't faded yet.  Write on!

New year, new book

 Just as the year 2025 begins, I have begun to read a new book.  It is a Victorian novel by one of my favorite authors, Anthony Trollope.  The Vicar of Bullhampton is a stand-alone novel, not part of one of Trollope's novel series, like the Chronicles of Barestshire, or the Palliser series.  I chose this book since it will be the topic of discussion at an online bookclub organized by The Trollope Society.  The first 14 chapters are due to be covered in the first meeting on Monday, January 6, 2025.  So far, I've made it through eight chapters and found the book to have a faster start than some of Trollope's novels.  Several main characters have already been introduced, and there's been a minor scuffle between two of them.  Tension, conflict, and a budding love affair, all in the first 52 pages!  This novel was published in 1870, by which time the prolific Trollope was a well-established author.  I've read over a dozen of his other works and look forward to completing this one.