When the snails saw the boy’s face as he opened the letter, they knew their journey was worth it.
                                                         from Snail Mail
                                         written by Samantha Berger
                                               pictures by Julia Patton
                                               Running Press Kids, 2018
    When I was in third grade, I was finally old enough to attend Hebrew School. Our class met after regular school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We learned about traditions, values, and most exciting, how to read and write in another language. The letters were exotic to my young eyes and hand. Being able to form different letters to represent familiar sounds clicked happily in my young brain.
    My great-grandma could not read or write English, although she spoke fluently (with a charming accent). She could read and write Russian and Yiddish, though. Although she said she didn’t remember any Russian words but Nyet (no), the Yiddish she spoke with my parents to protect us from what was going on in the world was a comfortable way for them to communicate.
    Years later, Gram lived with us. But not then and my eight-year-old self had an idea. I could practice my Hebrew letters to write English words and send my messages to Gram. Transliteration is a real thing, but I thought I made it up. 
    I wrote out her address the way we learned in regular school. I got a stamp and knew where on the envelop to stick it. I was old enough to walk to our corner mailbox by myself.
    When Gram got that letter, she was tickled pink!
    Who still mails letters? Or receives them? My mailbox is full of advertisements (read Junk), requests for contributions to causes worthy and otherwise (read more Junk), the regular utility and credit card bills, and once in a blue moon, a real letter or card from an old friend or a grandchild.
    But, the United States Postal Service is in financial trouble. This is not new trouble and it’s not going away. Louis DeJoy, the US Postmaster General has lots of ideas, some good, most bad, to fix the financial mess. 
    The USPS is an independent US Government Agency, but does not receive any taxpayer funds. Its only source of income comes from sales of stamps and other service fees like package deliveries. That’s a large part of the problem. 
    Before we delve into that, here are some fun facts.
    Forty-nine bicycle routes in Florida and Arizona are provided by the USPS. Mail Carriers also use planes, hovercraft, trains, trucks, cars, boats, ferries, helicopters, subways, and feet. The most unusual route uses between 10 and 22 mules to deliver mail to the Havasupai people who have lived in the Grand Canyon for at least the last 800 years. The trip is nine miles long. It takes three hours to get down and five to get back up. 
    Mail is collected in 140,875 blue mailboxes found in mostly convenient locations throughout cities and towns. According to USPS, in 2020, the Postal Service spent over $73 billion to pay almost half a million employees and maintain over 34,000 post offices and over 230,000 vehicles on 231,579 routes to deliver almost 130 billion pieces of First Class mail. That doesn’t count junk mail.        
    In 1963, ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan) codes were introduced to allow mail sorting methods to be automated. Numbers range from 00501 (IRS office in Holtsville, NY) to 99950 (Ketchikan, AK). One easy-to-remember ZIP Code is General Electric’s office in Schenectady, NY (12345). Newton Falls, OH (44444) and part of Arlington County, VA (22222) are the only places in the US that sport five identical numbers. 
    So back to the financial woes and how Congress proposes to solve them. Earlier this month (February, 2022), the House passed the hugely popular Postal Service Reform Act by a bi-partisan vote of 342-92. The aim of the legislation is to “[put] the Postal Service on a sound financial footing so it can continue serving all Americans for years to come.” (House Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney) 
    The Act requires retired postal employees to enroll in Medicare when they become eligible, and drops the mandate that forces the agency to cover its health care costs years in advance. The projected savings is over 50 billion dollars. 
    While the Postal Service receives no taxpayer funds, it is not allowed to set its own prices. Only Congress can do that. The result, USPS is operating in the red to the tune of almost $5,000,000,000.00 (five billion dollars) in 2020.
    Louis DeJoy wants to replace the fleet of gas-powered vehicles with electric vehicles. After the initial outlay, it is a huge cost-saver.
    He also wants to shorten office hours, lengthen delivery times, and remove equipment. The Postal Service Reform Act would mandate mail delivery six days per week, and provide for more transparency. The huge debt may be forgiven. The Act would allow the Postal Service to provide non-postal services like hunting and fishing licenses.
    Just when forward movement seemed possible, Rick Scott, Senator from Florida, dragged his feet. Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer accused Scott of holding up the bill over a “technical detail.” 
    So in the short run, we will pay a little more for a little less service. The Senate will vote (well, that’s the new plan) next month when they reconvene.
    In July 2020, the price to mail a letter was 55 cents. The price went up to 58 cents in August, 2021. Starting in July 2022, the USPS will increase First Class Mail prices twice a year. The amount of the increase has not been announced. It might be wise to stock up on Forever Stamps.
    But, fifty-eight cents to put a smile on someone’s face? For me, it’s still a bargain.
                                       stay curious! (and stay in touch)

Needed a week off to re-focus.
Thanks for understanding!
Next week...same time, same place!
​                                                     --stay curious!

Grrrr!
I sulked and moaned and whenever I heard my name. I said, “I don’t want to!”
                                                     from: No, I Won’t!
                                            written by Manica K. Musil
                                                  Windmill Books, 2020
   
A couple of years ago, when a new Mejiers was being built in the town next to mine, I vowed to not shop there. I have nothing particular against the store. It stocks everything from soup to nuts. Clothing, food, books, towels, pet toys, garden supplies, and a pharmacy. I took a look at their website just now. It looks great, but I still won’t go there. 
    The company built on land that was wild. They built a retention pond because the amount of land they needed for the store and the parking lot is vast. Now it’s paved and landscaped. I’m sure some people were hired. In my area of Ohio that’s not nothing. I understand. 
    My priorities are different, though. I value the land more than I value another one-stop- shopping store. But that’s just me. My personal boycott, even though I told many people about it, and now I’m mentioning it here, won’t make a bit of difference to Mr. Mejiers’s bottom line. I don’t need to shop there, and I don’t. It makes me feel like I’m at least doing something to defend Mother Earth, even though I know that something is very small.
    It’s my personal boycott. Which got me thinking about the word boycott. It’s an odd-duck of a word. Not made up. Not derived from another language. Not even very old, for a word. Turns out boycott is really Boycott, as in Charles Cunningham Boycott (March 12, 1832 - June 19, 1897). He was a land agent in Ireland. It was his job to make sure seasonal workers harvested the crops on Boycott’s boss’s land. When local activists decided to protect workers’ rights, they encouraged Boycott’s employees to “withdraw their labour.” Even the shop owners in nearby towns refused to serve Boycott. He wrote a letter of complaint to the London Times that got the attention of the local Irish government. Some sources say the work stoppage cost the British government and others ￡10,000 to protect the workers and make sure the crops were harvested.
    It was such a big deal, that Boycott’s name lost its capital B. Just like kleenex, xerox, and white-out, (wite-out is the brand’s spelling)  boycott, as a word, was coined. 
    Individuals have reasons to boycott. Activists have reasons to boycott, too. Even governments have reasons to boycott. In its simplest terms, a boycott is a refusal to buy something from a company or an individual whose policies you disagree with. A boycott could be a refusal to work for an employer whose work ethic is immoral or unethical. It could be a refusal to participate in activities financially beneficial to a country whose government acts immorally or unethically toward its citizens.
    And here we are at the Winter Olympics, 2022 in Beijing. The Biden administration is staging a diplomatic boycott over what it calls genocide and crimes against humanity in the Xinjiang region of China. The humanity he’s referring to is the Uyghur population. They are Muslim. And Chinese. It has been said that more than a million Uyghurs have been detained in “re-education camps” (read: concentration camps). They are not allowed to use their native language and must speak Chinese. There is evidence of forced labor, torture, and sexual abuse. 
    The United States is not alone our diplomatic boycott condemning this behavior. Canada, Australia, Japan, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom have all announced diplomatic boycotts.            
    The Games have been boycotted before for different reasons, by other countries. 
        1956: Seven countries boycotted the games held in Melbourne, Australia for a variety of reasons. 
            The Soviet Union had invaded Hungary in an attempt to stop a
            revolution against the Communist regime. In protest, the
            Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland all refused to participate.

            The People’s Republic of China withdrew because Taiwan
            was allowed to participate as a separate country. 

            Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon boycotted the Olympics due to the
            British-Israeli-French invasion of Egypt to control the Suez
            Canal. That year, 1956, in a show of peace, the Olympic
            athletes, for the first time, marched into the closing
            ceremony mixed together, rather than as separate nations.
            It’s a tradition that continues today.
        1976: Twenty-eight African nations decided to boycott the games when the IOC allowed New Zealand to compete. New Zealand’s Rugby team had recently toured South Africa, defying an international sports embargo due to South Africa’s apartheid policies.
        1980: Sixty-five countries supported the US-led boycott of the Games held in Moscow. Soviet Russia had invaded Afghanistan and the world spoke out. Some athletes competed without a flag, some competed under the Olympic flag, but most sat out the games entirely. With so many powerful athletes out of the competition, the                 Soviets won 195 medals, an Olympic record that still stands.
        1984: Fourteen countries followed the Soviet Unions’s retaliation of the 1980 games. Even so, the Olympic Games set a record for the most-seen event in TV history.
        1988: Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and North Korea boycotted the events held in Seoul, South Korea, claiming security issues. Even with the boycott, the Games set new participation records. Eight thousand athletes competed from 159 nations.
    All these boycotts are motivated by politics. This year, though, the United States did not prohibit our athletes from competing. President Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki stated, “The athletes on Team USA have our full support, we will be behind them 100% as we cheer them on from home.”
    While protests are also political, a boycott usually has some financial consequences attached to it. While I continue to boycott Mejiers, Home Depot, and Chick Fil-A, I know I’m doing so for my own reasons, not for any financial repercussions to the companies. After all, I’m a pretty small coin in a very large banking system.
                     -—stay curious! (and true to your convictions)

    “I’m hungry,” Pooh said. “I think we should go home and have some lunch.”
    “But we don’t know the way,” Piglet pointed out. “Do we?”
                                              from Rabbit Gets Lost
                                             adapted by Isabel Gaines
                                         illustrated by Studio Orlando
                                                    Disney Press, 1998
    I can get lost backing out of my own driveway. Okay, not really. But, even if I’ve been somewhere many, many, many times, I’m usually unsure how to get back there. And I’m better outside a building than I am inside, especially an unfamiliar one.
    Does this ever happen to you? You turn onto a familiar street, but all the houses and buildings are on the wrong side of the road. You’re moving forward through time and space, but it feels like everything is going the wrong way round. It only lasts about a minute or two. But still.
    When the girls and I wanted to go to the big playground in our large city park, we’d pile into the car, click our seatbelts, and take off. I’d drive to where the playground was last time, but lo and behold! it was not there. I’d try another road and another looking for it, until I gave up and told the girls that someone must have moved it. “Maybe we’ll find it the next time,” I’d tell them with as much cheer as I could muster, and turn toward The Consolation Prize, my name for the small playground near our house that always stayed where it belonged. 
    Just like everything else in this world, directionality lives on a continuum. And it’s hereditary. Some people, like my brother, have an extraordinary sense of direction. And like my dad. But not me. Not my older daughter, either. 
    Generally people are successful maneuvering through space by using two tools. One: follow a prescribed set of written (or oral) turn-by-turn directions. The other: follow a set of landmarks in a particular order. Most people navigate with a combination. Most people will remember the order of the combination. Most people can construct an internal visual map including correct north-south and east-west orientation and successfully find their way to a place, especially if they’ve been there before. 
    But not everyone.
    Not having a sense of direction, or not having a very good one, is called Developmental Topographic Disorientation (DTD).
    In severe cases of DTD, a person cannot construct a “bird’s-eye- view” map in their mind. They can’t place one landmark or street corner in relation to another, and so really don’t have a sense of where they are in space. Following step-by-step directions is a do-able exercise, but the next time, and the time after that ... those directions need to be handy.
    Our brain’s hippocampus is responsible for memory, including place memory. Among other types of cells, the hippocampus has two types, place cells and grid cells. Place cells identify where we are, while grid cells remind us of the spatial relationship of this place to other places we’ve been.  
    Before I moved to my new town, I could call my dad and ask him to go for a ride with me. He’d tell me “turn right, turn left …” and I’d pay him back with a nice lunch. When I moved, I got lost less often. I know part of my solution was paying attention. I had to rely on myself. My dad lived too far away for a ride and lunch. But paying attention was only part of the solution. My place cells and my grid cells don’t light up as much as some other peoples’ do. My mental maps are inferior.
    Now we have GPS.
    And what about using GPS? 
    Simply put, when I use GPS I don’t need to pay attention to landmarks, street signs, or intersections at all. The patient voice lets me know when to turn. If I make a mistake she (mine is “she”) kindly lets me know she’s recalculating my route. 
    In a study described in nature.com, “GPS habits were associated with lower cognitive mapping abilities” and “These results suggest that using GPS renders individuals less able to form an accurate mental representation of their surroundings when they are navigating without GPS.” In other words, by depending on the GPS, I reduce even further, my ability (shallow that it already is) to make those birds-eye-view internal maps. This study suggests further, that the more a person uses GPS, the more spatial memory will decline. 
    My dad was my own personal GPS. Only he wasn’t quite as patient. When I made a mistake, he didn’t always use his kindest voice to recalculate. Sorry, Daddy. We did have some good lunches, though.
    Some strategies to improve the activity of the place and grid cells, making mind-maps more easily created, have been shown to be effective. Paying attention is a good first step. Naming and noting a familiar landmark, say a large building you can see from many perspectives, and imagining the buildings nearby, will serve as a frame of reference.
    Some tricks are available to everyone. Address numbers usually decrease as you get closer to the center of town. Even-numbered Interstate routes run east-west, while odd-numbered ones go north-south. State routes do, too. You can discover others, like the sun rises in the east. Moss generally grows on the north side of trees. And the North Star is stationary in the night sky.
    Physical exercise improves blood flow to the brain. Mental exercise, like doing puzzles or learning a new language, stimulates the development of new nerve cells and connections in your brain.
    One lap around my house is about 600 steps. I need five laps a day to get close to my goal. I will be warm enough. I can use those happy-face stickers I got out of the drawer a couple of weeks ago. And I won’t get lost.
                                  -—stay curious! (and pay attention)