Save Door-to-Door Service - Canada Post

Whenever I drive to Starbucks, I see this sign staked in the front yard of one particular house. I couldn't read the fine print at the bottom, so I was rather perplexed by the meaning of the sign - "Save door-to-door". Eh? What is that. One day I looked a bit closer and realized that the sign referred to the decision by Canada Post to eliminate door-to-door mail delivery over the next few years. They plan to replace it with community mailboxes, already a feature of rural routes and new developments. Why? Well, mainly because Canadians are sending less mail. We have email. We have electronic billing. We have paperless statements. Most of the mail that shows up in our mailbox is advertising... and maybe something from Revenue Canada.

Anyhow, I guess you can order these signs (Save door-to-door) for your window or your front yard. It's a way to indicate your support for door-to-door mail delivery. I know that their are several arguments for saving it:

• the elderly and others with mobility issues will have trouble accessing community mailboxes.
• community mailboxes aren't safe
• community mailboxes are unsightly and messy (people chuck flyers and advertisements on the ground)

I took a look at the website - www.savecanadapost.ca - because I thought there might be other arguments for saving door-to-door delivery... but there aren't.

I am a bit torn on this issue. I have had door-to-door mail delivery and it is very nice. I have also lived in an apartment building where I had to go downstairs to get my mail from a bank of mailboxes (something that would still continue after door-to-door is eliminated). I have also lived in a house where our mail is delivered to a community mailbox - down the street and around the corner.

I also wonder at some of the arguments put forward:

Security - no doubt, some community mailboxes get pried open and that's not secure. But the same can happen to the mailbox on your house. Personally, I've had small parcels delivered to my house door and left sitting out in the rain, visible for all to see. I'd much rather receive a pick-up-your-parcel-at-the-local-post-office tag.

Unsightly - is that the problem of the community mailboxes or the people who pick up their mail? I don't understand people who pick up their mail and then throw the advertisements on the ground. Who do they think is going to pick up after them. Myself, I just tuck them back in the mail slot.

Mobility - most houses in our neighbourhood have stairs - either at the front door or within the homes themselves. For sure, some people with mobility issues live in houses with stairs... but if they can negotiate the stairs and get to their vehicle, then it would seem they can probably get to their mailbox. If they are so house-bound that they can't get out to check their mail, then I wonder how they get out to buy groceries. I know a lot of seniors who live in apartments or condo complexes where their mail is delivered to banks of mailboxes in the lobbies. My mother lives in a senior's housing development where she has to walk to the main office building to collect her mail from a bank of mailboxes. Essentially a community mailbox.

I get the upset about losing something that we've had for decades. It's been a huge convenience for us... but is it essential? I also find it interesting that I've only seen one of the Save Door-to-Door signs while driving around town. I won't be posting one on my lawn... I already don't have Door-to-Door service.

And in case you think we have it bad... did you know prior to 1942, Canadians enjoyed twice-a-day mail delivery? And we got our mail on Saturdays too!! But that all changed in 1942 as the war took its toll on the number of men available for letter carrier duties. According to the Canadian Museum of History:

In May [1942], letter carrier delivery service is reduced from two deliveries to one delivery a day, six days a week. In 1945, twice-daily letter carrier service is restored "provided that such restoration will be effective gradually ... when men returning from military service are available ... [and] when the actual requirements of the public service demand the restoration of the two deliveries per day." In April 1946, two deliveries per day are resumed in residential areas. In 1951, letter carrier delivery service to residential areas is reduced from two to one calls per day. Starting 17 February 1969, Saturday delivery service in major urban centres is discontinued and a five-day week delivery service is introduced.

I can only imagine the upset in 1951 and 1969. I wonder if we had signs on our front lawns back then bemoaning the loss of twice-daily mail delivery. Or signs in our windows lamenting the loss of Saturday delivery.

As an aside... the United States Postal Service discontinued twice-daily mail delivery in 1950, but still delivers mail on Saturdays...

And the Royal Mail in Great Britain only eliminated twice-daily mail delivery about 10 years ago. They are only now toying with the idea of eliminating Saturday deliveries. They're even talking about switching from daily delivery to delivery every second day.

The times... they are a-changing... A real tragedy would be if our emails were only delivered once a day!

P.S. A good question is: Who is behind the Save-Door-to-Door campaign? No surprise - it's CUPW - the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Highly paid postal workers want to keep their jobs... and their benefits.

The Contemplative Practice of Polishing Shoes

When I was a kid, in my tweens and teens, I would trot down to the basement every once in a while and dig around in our shoe shelf. I'd pull out a magical box that was filled with glass jars of shoe cream and tins of shoe polish, shoe brushes and old flannel rags. I'd plop the box on the old wooden workbench and then go find some shoes that needed polishing. I was pretty open... my shoes, my dad's shoes, my mom's shoes... any leather shoes that looked like they needed some spit and polish.

Then I'd happily sit there for an hour and methodically polish shoes. First I'd give the shoes a good brush to remove any loose dirt. Then I'd select a cloth, dap it into the appropriate shoe polish or shoe cream and rub it all over the shoe. I'd work the polish into the leather and then pull out the shoe brush and give the shoe a nice polishing. It was kind of neat to be able to watch the shoe transform from dull to shiny.

Why did I enjoy polishing shoes so much? Well... it's not something I was forced to do... I don't think. Although maybe at some point it was originally on my list of chores. But I really enjoyed the hands on experience of making a difference, of watching something transform underneath my hands. Going from dirty and dull to clean and polished. There was a real sense of satisfaction, of a job well-done.

Nowadays, things are different. I can't remember the last time I polished my shoes. Today, we have "Express Shine", little foamie things that we brush over our shoes that immediately give the dull leather a new lease on life. It's quick. It's easy. But the satisfaction factor isn't quite the same.

AD - The Bible Continues - History Repeating Itself?

I was watching the new tv show, A.D. The Bible Continues, yesterday. My dad had taped them on the PVR and I thought I might as well take a look at them. The first two episodes were there - the one in which Jesus is crucified and the follow-up where the tomb is empty. I'm still trying to figure out which apostles the various actors are portraying but it's obvious that Mary Magdalene is not a blue-eye European and John is actually a dark African. I think the casting is a fascinating way to disrupt our preconceived notions about Jesus and his apostles.

During the show however, I was also fascinated by the interactions between the occupying Roman forces and the Jewish people. There are Jewish zealots (fanatics) who want nothing more than to oust the Romans out of Judea, by force if necessary. Then there is the High Priest who is walking a fine line between keeping the Romans happy and not alienating his own people. There were several scenes in which the Roman guards were searching people as they go into and out of the city gates.

It didn't take much for me to jump 2000 years into the future and think... those could be:

Israeli soldiers and Palestinian refugees
Russian soldiers and Afghan herdsman
German soldiers and French citizens
English soldiers and Irish civilians
American soldiers and Vietnamese peasants

Take your pick. It doesn't really matter the era, the behaviour on both sides is the same. Contempt for the occupied. Hatred of the occupier. Invading and occupying the homeland of a people will always be a no-win situation. But somehow, we never seem to learn the lessons from history. And so history keeps repeating itself...

Outer vs. Inner Exploration

The Starbucks that I like to frequent has a set of four framed pictures on the wall. The pictures are made to look like pages from an explorer's notebook, complete with hand-drawn maps, photographs, sketches and measurements. The overall theme is one of an exotic locale - a jungle with strange musical instruments, pottery, palm trees and coffee beans.

I was looking at the photographs this morning and imagining what it must have been like to be an explorer in the 1700s seeing a new continent or a new island for the first time. The new vegetation and animals, the thrill of discovery and exploration. Two hundred years ago there were vast tracts of unexplored territory in the New World, in Africa, in Asia. Today, however, most of the world has been mapped and charted, with perhaps the exception of the deep sea. We can still lose things down there with little hope of finding them.

We, and by that I mean Western Society, have become very adept at exploring the outer world. We have documented new species, disappearing species. We have explored the earth and figured out plate tectonics. We look out to the stars as the next frontier for exploration - or at least the Moon and Mars. But how many of us will have the chance of embarking on some great exploration to the planets and the stars? Very few.

In the meantime, while we have been exploring the outer world, we have been neglecting the inner world. We might know what makes the earth tick, and how the Sun works... but we still don't really know what thoughts are. Where do they come from? Where do they go? We shy away from our subconscious like it is the deepest, darkest, most dangerous jungle on the earth. There is a lot of uncharted territory within us. What makes us tick? What makes us think the thoughts that we do? Do they actually mean anything - our thoughts? Or are they just fleeting things that blow in on the breeze? Innocuous and meaningless until we notice them, pick them out of the air and nurture them? Would these thoughts simply blow away again if we didn't pay them any mind?

There always seems to be a constant stream of thoughts flowing through my mind - strange ones, familiar ones - friendly ones, scary ones. When I am feeling blue, it usually means that I have plucked a few negative thoughts out of the air and started to take them seriously. The more I fixate on them, the bluer I get, the more anxious, the more upset. I start to believe that the thoughts mean something - after all, I thought them, didn't I? Or did I?

Perhaps some thoughts are like dandelion seeds in the wind. They are just there and we see them blow by us and think that that they are ours. Maybe they aren't. Maybe they are from someone else. After all, we really don't know much about thoughts. But one thing is certain, it was our choice to pull them out of the clouds and take them to heart. In that respect, we do have a choice as to what we think. We get to choose what thoughts receive our attention. Our attention is like fertilizer to the thoughts - whichever ones we choose to focus on. Fertilize the negative thoughts, the unhappy thoughts, the "life is going to heck in a handbasket" thoughts, and they will happily grow larger and more imposing.

But we can also turn our attention elsewhere. In fact, our emotional state is a good indicator of what sort of thoughts currently have the benefit of our attention. If we are feeling anxious and gloomy... stressed and overwhelmed... it is pretty much a sure thing that we have focused on thoughts that tell us "there is too much to do", "people are taking advantage of you", "you are such a sucker - you can never say no".

Usually those thoughts focus on what is wrong with the world around us - how the people around us, the circumstances around us - are all conspiring to ruin our lives. We bob along on these thoughts, twisting and turning in the current, trying to figure out how to better survive what the world is throwing at us. The more we focus how we can fix the situation - the world, the people, the circumstances - the deeper we are sucked into the thought vortex that has us firmly in its grasp. It's a messy thing.

And it all started with a drifting thought which we grabbed out of thin air. We can catch it early, when it's still small - be mindful of our state of mind, our state of emotion, and recognize that the thought we have grabbed is not a helpful one. In fact, if we pick that one out of the air, we'll soon find that there are myriad of other ones of a similar ilk that come flocking to us, eager for a handout of attention. Sort of like pigeons in the park. Feed one pigeon and pretty soon you'll have a whole horde of them around you.

So what do we do when we're in the throes of a thought vortex? Walk away from the pigeons. Turn your attention elsewhere. Anywhere else. Turn your focus and your attention to something for which you are grateful. It takes practice. And we're not very good at it. We have well-worn ruts that takes us through the dark forest of our inner world. But that's what inner exploration is all about. What would happen if we did things differently, if we chose a different path? A good question - one worth exploring.

But Letter-Writing Costs Money!

I know, I know... writing letters costs money. There are the cards and envelopes. Not to mention postage, which has gotten ridiculous in the last few years. $0.85 for a Canadian card! Sheesh. But... there are ways of getting a discount on stamps! Yup, there is.

I took the easy way out.

When I was a kid, I collected stamps. During the 1970s and 1980s, I bought new stamps and kept them in a separate stamp album from my "used" stamps. I usually bought them in blocks of 4. The idea was that they would be worth $$$ some day. But... the truth is... they aren't.

Stamps made before about 1945 are worth $$$$. Stamps made after that... well, they're just too common. If you try and sell your mint condition stamps from the 1970s and 1980s, you might get 80% of their face value. What?? Yeah... those stamps are worth more to you as postage than they are as a collector's item.

I blinked when I learned that and then sat down, looked at all my mint Canadian stamps, and started to pull them apart and reassemble them into groupings that added up to $0.85, $1.20 and $2.50 (Canadian, US and International rates). The $0.08 ones were a bit tricky but... it didn't take long before I had them all arranged in my old stamp albums.

I've started using them as postage. I don't envy the poor postal worker who has to add up the value of 5 or 6 stamps but... that's not my problem!

So... that's my solution. But what happens when I run out of those stamps - in 2017 or 2018? Well... if you look on Ebay... you'll often find this.

Someone in Fort McMurray is selling a lot of mint condition stamps with a face value of $50 for $35. That's a 30% discount off of Canada Post. So, a letter will only cost you $0.60 instead of $0.85! Admittedly you have to assemble the correct postage combinations... but, that's kind of fun.

Maybe you've got a stash of mint condition stamps tucked away. Take a look and consider... how long have you had to pay to store them (rent & mortgage for square footage), move them (stamp albums are heavy) and maybe even insure them. They might be worth more to you as postage than as an investment.

The Lost Art of Letter Writing

I was raised to write hand-written thank you notes to my grandparents for gifts received. I didn't always like doing it... but my Mom insisted. To make it even harder, I usually had to do it in German... which was even more challenging.

When I moved to university, I found myself writing long letters back home with news of my adventures. In turn, I received long letters from my Mom and my sister, and short notes from my Dad, which was very nice.

But then came email... and texts... and Facebook. It's so much easier to just whip off an email or send a quick text... or post a comment on Facebook or even just Like a post. Writing a card or a letter is a bit more complicated. Need the card/paper. Need a pen. Need to think of what to write that will fill the pages. Need to find the address... and some stamps... and a return address label. Whew... that's tough!

But writing letters is somehow more satisfying than sending an email. I can't quite put my finger on it but... I like it. My handwriting has gotten a bit out of practice. But I know the joy of opening a mailbox and finding honest-to-God personal mail inside!! Handwritten and addressed to ME!!! It's something to savour, something to enjoy. Not that emails aren't bad. It's just different.

My 8-year old niece has started a pen pal relationship with a third cousin in Germany who's about the same age. They aren't doing this via email or Facebook. They are actually sending letters and cards back and forth. Perhaps their generation will rediscover the joy of letter writing. Of knowing that the person actually put some personal effort and thought into the art of communication. It's kind of cool actually. And inspiring... that the young ones are rediscovering the art of letter writing.

Update on the Book-buying and Hot Chocolate Addictions

First the good news! I haven't bought a single book this year! That's a definite step-forward. I have been regularly borrowing books from the local public library and that keeps my book-cravings in check. The fact that the books have a deadline (3 weeks) also means that I am a bit more intentional about reading them. On the other hand, my tendency to read more than one book at once means that I sometimes have to send books back without having finished them. Sometimes that is due to the fact that I tried to read too many books at once. Other times that is simply due to the fact that the book wasn't all that interesting and I got bogged down in it.

It's also true that sometimes I put in too many requests and they all get delivered the same week and I find myself swamped in books. My eyes are sometimes bigger than my mind it seems. So many books - so little time!!

So, that's the good news. The bad news... well, although I have been able to keep my Starbucks visits down to the weekends, more or less, my hot chocolate addiction hasn't shown any signs of improvement in other areas. I have been making home-made hot chocolate using sugar, cocoa, milk and the microwave. Every morning, after the rush is over, I make my hot chocolate and savour it as I get into the routine of my writing. But... some days I want a second one... and sometimes I make a second one. Which is not good! The point of Kicking Starbucks to the curb was to: (a) save money and (b) cut down on the sugar and (c) lose weight. So far, I am only ticking the box on (a).

So... I've been doing a bit of research into sugar... and realizing that I am a bit of a sugar addict. As a result... as of Easter Tuesday, we are going to go on a serious sugar fast. Which means cutting out my weekday hot chocolates. Sigh... so sad! I did an experiment the last couple of days and instead of having my hot chocolate, had water with lemon in it. Not the same. Not at all. But apparently the lemon water will help my taste-buds to reset. Ugh.