Stamp out postal rate hikes!

I guess I wasn't paying attention last April 12 when the U.S. Postal Service announced planned issue of the "Forever Stamp."

It came out in time for the rate hike last May from 39¢ to the present 41¢ for a one-ounce first class letter.

The rates are going up again this May. The one-ounce first class rate will creep up by a penny to 42¢.

The deal with the Forever Stamp is that it sells for whatever is the current one-ounce first class rate, making it possible to continue mailing at the present rate as long as your supply of Forever Stamps holds out.

“The Postal Service developed the Forever Stamp for consumers to ease the transition during price changes,” said Postmaster General John Potter. “We encourage Americans to buy Forever Stamps now for 41 cents, because like the name suggests, they are good forever.”

The Postal Service has sold 5 billion Forever Stamps since the launch last April and plans to have an additional 5 billion in stock to meet the expected demand before the May price change.

Your recollection of the basic postal rate is a pretty good way to gauge your age. I'm old enough to remember the 3¢ letter and the 1¢ postcard.

Here's a chronology of basic U.S. postage rates:

July 1, 1885	.02
Nov. 3, 1917	.03
July 1, 1919	.02
July 5, 1932	.03
Aug. 1, 1958	.04
Jan. 7, 1963	.05
Jan. 7, 1968	.06
May 16, 1971	.08
March 2, 1974	.10
Dec. 31, 1975	.13
May 29, 1978	.15
March 22, 1981	.18
Feb. 17, 1985	.22
April 3, 1988	.25
Feb. 3, 1991	.29
Jan. 1, 1995	.32
Jan. 10, 1999	.33
Jan. 7, 2001	.34
June 30, 2002	.37
Jan. 8, 2006	.39
May 14, 2007	.41
May 12, 2008	.42

 

Notice that the rate actually decreased once - in 1919. Don't expect to see that happen again.

Validation for our Arkansas move

When Philip T. Smith made the decision to switch publishers between his Crawfordsville (Ind.) Journal Review and Pampas (Tex.) News, he created a scenario that almost certainly dooms the person in the Journal Review managing editor's office.

That's because Pampas publisher Sean Smith is married to Kerri Smith, the Pampas managing editor. So who do you suppose he will want to be his ME in Crawfordsville?

If Maria hadn't seized the opportunity for career growth in Arkansas last summer, it would be her instead of JR ME Jay Heater staring into the abyss of joblessness. (Heater aspires to work at The Indianapolis Star. As a career journalist who took early retirement in October, 2000, rather than work another day for the management at The Star, all I can say to Heater is to be careful what you wish for.)

Whether new management can resurrect the Journal Review remains to be seen.

The core of the advertising sales staff has defected to the startup daily, The Paper of Montgomery County.

Fired General Manager and Ad Director Mark Deacon is now living a more lucrative and stress-free life in Chippewa Falls, Wisc.

Fired Circulation Manager John Marshall has opened channels with The Paper and is working on a book chronicling the tragic mismanagement that took the Journal Review from a solid moneymaker to its present desperate straits in just three short years.

Talented former Assistant ME Sam King has returned to his first love - sportswriting - at the Lafayette Journal & Courier, where he works with former JR page designer Karen Taylor, arguably the best newspaper page designer in Indiana.

Shaylan Owen, who was named the top ad designer in Indiana in last year's Hoosier State Press Association competition, is also gone - living the good life at the Bloomington Herald where he is better paid and has more perks. He offered to stay at the JR for a trifling $1/hour raise, but the publisher refused.

I feel compelled to add that these are my opinions and observations alone and do not reflect the views of my wife, who has a considerably more compassionate take on the events of the past three years. I, after all, am the grumpy old man of the family and this is how grumpy old men see things.

How to overthink a problem

When Maria returned from a page design class in Little Rock last night, she shut off the Subaru engine and pulled out the key. That's when she noticed the parking lights were still on, as evidenced by the amber glow shining on the garage door.

I investigated and I found the brake lights on as well. Although it was counterintuitive, I wondered it if might be a fuse problem. I pulled the appropriate fuse and examined it. It was fine, and the lights - of course - went out when it was out of the circuit. I put in a fresh fuse and the lights came back on. So I left it out so as to avoid draining the battery overnight and resolved to make an appointment with the nearest Subaru dealer (Memphis) for Monday, which would be my next opportunity to deal with the problem. I figured something had just gone hopelessly wonky with the electrical system.

I called the service department at Jim Keras Subaru in Memphis this morning and the woman who answered the phone announced she could solve my problem immediately. And, yes, it was the parking light switch - a pretty much never-used switch atop the steering wheel assembly, that Maria had inadvertently flipped sometime yesterday.

Fuse in, switch off, problem solved.

She also told me that the clock, which quit working about a month ago despite intact fuses, is almost certainly hosed.

"They just die sometimes," she said, adding that it will cost about $150 to replace.

Since Maria doesn't wear a watch, that clock and her cell phone are the only devices she has handy to tell the time, so it's probably worth the expense to replace it.

Only 48 governors to go...

This is Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe addressing the local Kiwanis Club today. I can now claim to have met 4 percent of the nation's governors. Beebe comes across as genuine, articulate and competent - all admirable qualities in a governor.

Now, if he rides a motorcycle like Mitch Daniels, the impression will be complete.

A newspaper in free-fall

One more gone, and this time it was the publisher.

Sent back down to the minors - a smaller six-day (no Saturday paper) daily in the Texas panhandle. Checking the paper's website, it appears that news writing is not their strong suit.

During his tenure, he drove out nearly all of the talented people in the building. Some were fired on a whim because it became embarrassingly obvious that they saw through the publisher's bluster and incompetence. Happily, everyone who left is now better off for getting out.

Unfortunately, the damage has been done and the door has been opened for the start-up paper in town to triumph - something that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

Fashion and controversy

      Shooting spring fashions for a special publication.

This is Dr. Eddie Cooper. He wants to establish a Christian home for abused children in an upscale neighborhood. Here he tells the plan commission about how he and his wife chose the site and how God confirmed their choice with a double rainbow.

This is attorney Skip Mooney, who represents residents of the upscale neighborhood who think the home, called King's Ranch, will harm their property values.

This is a member of the plan commission, scoping out the King's Ranch website on his laptop computer during the plan commission meeting.

And this is Dr. Cooper's wife Lee, whose expression suggests she is not quite ready to join the Skip Mooney Fan Club.

 

Nostalgia

Tim Balough send me a link to this web page.

At 62, I'm old enough to remember most of the things referenced.  This is me with my original Captain Midnight Ovaltine cup, circa 1956.

Catch 22 with Sprint

We have cell phone service with Sprint and I've been paying my Sprint bill online for years. Without a problem. Until now.

Sprint revamped their website security last month, requiring new passwords and PINs. So I jumped through the appropriate hoops in mid-January so as to be able to keep using the site for bill-paying.

Since the bill comes due at the end of the month, I immediately started checking the site for the January bill. I checked it daily from mid-January until yesterday - Feb. 11 - when I finally found a bill posted. And to my shock, it showed I had failed to pay my January bill by the due date of Jan. 31.

The question, of course, is how in the hell can I pay a bill that I can't access? This is one of the pitfalls of going to paperless billing - a process that benefits Sprint but makes this kind of snafu possible.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone yesterday morning with Sprint representatives getting this sorted out and getting them to deduct the $2.32 late fee.

Yesterday's effort

Here's some of what I shot yesterday:Thursday is Valentine's Day, you know.

Last evening James Byard (the new guy whose presence will make it possible for me to return to retirement) and I shot a ninth-grade basektball game between the two junior high schools that feed into the local high school. It's apparently a big rivalry, which makes it worthy of coverage at a level we don't normally pay attention to.

Here's MacArthur Junior High ninth-grader Jamal Jones going up for a dunk during the first quarter of play. Who knew freshmen could dunk? This was the dominant photo on the sports section cover this morning.

Here's one I just noticed this morning. The kid in black is being stripped of the ball. I love the intensity on the faces.

Shooting 9th grade basketball

Really.

Well, the nomination counts for something...

Last night's Grammy Awards were a bit of a disappointment. The Shins album "Wincing the Night Away" was up for independent album of the year and producer Joe Chiccarelli was nominated for producer of the year. Both awards went elsewhere.

I had an interest in the outcome because my son Sean was an engineer on the project.

But even though they didn't win, a Grammy nomination is still a very big deal and I'm enormously proud.

Marty Crandall, Joe Chiccarelli, James Mercer, and Sean Flora in the studio.

Fingers crossed

Our Realtor uses a special website to keep us posted on when prospective buyers schedule a visit to our house.
I just got notification that a showing is scheduled for 4-6 p.m. tomorrow. That would be the second showing, so far. The first was yesterday afternoon.
It sure would be nice to get a reasonable offer in the next few days.
My son Steve and his wife Nicky sold their Cincinnati house to the first person who looked at it. I'd say it was great luck, but they put a lot of work and effort into the place.

What I did today

I'll lead off with what I think is the most eye-arresting photo of the day - a shot of Samantha Aitken offering up the first Nathan's Famous Hot Dog to be prepared at the Bruster's Real Ice Cream store on Jonesboro's southwestside.

Here's an exterior shot that I did mainly for the owner's benefit.

The first assignment of the day was the county spelling bee, which was held in a TV studio on the ASU campus. That made for excellent lighting conditions. Here's a shot of a kid listening to the pronouncer give a definition of a word he subsequently misspelled.

I noticed this bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot outside the spelling bee site.

And this shot - an environmental portrait of a woman I was photographing in her home.

Busy day yesterday

An HDR composite image from about 4,000 feet. CAT Aviation out of Walnut Ridge gave me an hour-long photo recon flight over the tornado devastation from Ash Flat to Highland yesterday.

Here are some shots of the trashed Highland shopping mall and a couple of houses.

As I drove back to the office, I came upon an accident scene. The pregnant woman being treated on the gurney was on a bicycle when she was struck by a motorist. She was not seriously injured.

And lastly, Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller made an appearance at ASU last night. Here's the 89-year-old Feller giving tips to an aspiring 9-year-old from Paragould, Ark. 

Airborne

About 5,000 feet over the path of a tornado near Highland, Ark.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Jan. 12, 1911(?)-Feb. 5, 2008

I learned this morning that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement, died earlier this week in the Netherlands.

Here's a photo I shot in August, 1971, on a TM teacher training course on the campus of Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif.

I'll add to this after I've had time to process the information.

Yesterday

Yesterday was sort of a slow day on the dreaded 1-10 p.m. shift.

The woman at the left is Rose Ong'oa, a doctoral student in the ASU Heritage Studies Program. She's holding a piece of kanga folk art from Zanzibar where women, in the "enlightened" tradition of Islam, are to be seen (sorta) and not heard.

So, to express themselves, they wear clothes and carry objects that are decorated with messages in Swahili. This market basket says, “Come closer my love and let’s eat together. I can’t do it alone.”

Her collection of textiles and other kanga-related objects is on exhibit this month at the ASU Museum.

The museum also has a pretty good display of objects from America's wars. Naturally, I was drawn to the section dealing with the Third Reich, since I collect stuff related to that regime. The only glitch I could find was that a Kriegsmarine (navy) dagger is mounted backwards so that you can't see the front of the eagle/wreath/swastika on the pommel.

Because the blade only fits into the brass scabbard one way, it would be a bit of a hassle to flip the whole display of blade, scabbard and hangers.

And it may be that the dagger was mounted that way because the obverse of the pommel is damaged.

My other contribution was this photo of Craighead County Election Coordinator Sharon Albert checking the numbered seals on boxes of paper ballots from Tuesday's primary.

On assignment

At the ASU Museum.

Fat Tuesday at the retirement home

One of my favorite Super Bowl commercials

Political commentary

Feels like spring here

I suppose I'll change my tune when the steaming heat of summer arrives or when we get flattened by a tornado or frozen in an ice storm, but I sure am liking the weather here in Arkansas.

The temperature got up to 73 here yesterday and I was able to go for a motorcycle ride in just a t-shirt under me BMW AirFlow summer jacket.

It was 66 when we got up this morning, making it possible for me to sit in shirtsleeves on the screened back porch, reading the paper, sipping coffee and watching the dogs run around our fenced backyard. In contrast, it was 22 degrees colder this morning in Thorntown.

Heading off to work soon by way of the Brookland Fire Station where I'll cast my Super Tuesday ballot for John McCain in the Republican primary. Mike Huckabee will doubtless carry Arkansas, since it's his home state, but I gotta vote my conscience.

Aussie pup

Went to a big-ass Superbowl party tonight with a silent auction and watched a woman buy this Aussie pup for about $300.

Arkansas Sportshow

 

Who needs NASCAR?

Low-speed thrills.

At the Sportshow

Furniture to get lost in while wearing your camo.

Stylin'

$25! What the hell. Made of a heavier gauge of the same stuff as my Frog Toggs motorcycle rainsuit.

At the Sportshow

Camo duds for half-price! What a great chance to Arkansasize my wardrobe!

Sound the Deguello

In case we needed a reminder about who has the moral high ground:

BAGHDAD - Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally handicapped women detonated in a coordinated attack on pet bazaars Friday, police and Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital this spring.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the use of mentally retarded women as suicide bombers proves al-Qaida is “the most brutal and bankrupt of movements” and will strengthen Iraqi resolve to reject terrorism.

Arkansas fashion statement

Seen this afternoon at the Arkansas Sportshow: camo crocs.

Sometimes it's easy

I left home about 12:30 p.m. yesterday with the assignment to shoot some weather-related photos. I got about 50 yards before I saw this scene. It's four columns color at the top of this morning's front page.

One of those little mysteries

Did you ever notice how many people have trouble pronouncing "sausage?"