‘The bad that is bad now’ began a long time ago

     When Dorothy Parker heard that Calvin Coolidge had died, she quipped, “How can they tell?”
     Which about summarizes my reaction to news that Donald Trump is wrecking the U.S. Postal Service.
     Without question, new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has hurt the USPS during his brief tenure, particularly by ending overtime.
     It’s also true that some changes he’s being blamed for, like pulling out high-speed letter sorting machines, were already in the works. 

Mack Julion

  
     “You cannot say horrible service in Chicago started this spring,” said Mack Julion, a Chicago postal worker for 23 years and president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 11. “Bad service in Chicago began at least a year ago and got worse during the pandemic.”
     An institution as enormous as the post office is like an ocean liner. It takes time to turn. DeJoy showed up in June.
     “The directives we hear are coming from his office have yet to hit the workroom floor in Chicago,” Julion said. “The bad that is bad now, that’s basically Chicago management. He can make it worse. You can’t cut overtime in Chicago because we don’t have enough carriers to deliver the mail. Here’s, that’s unthinkable.”
     And unworkable....

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Not anytime soon.

Chalked sidewalk plea, Northbrook, Aug. 20, 2020

      One common mistake among middling writers of opinion is to take whatever emotion they are experiencing and universalize it.  The viewpoint being aired is not their own particular private perspective. Oh no no no no. Nothing that singular. Nor are they responsible for airing this set of notions. Not at all. Rather, they are merely reporting and seconding common wisdom, merely conveying the vox mundi. 

     Haters do this a lot; Trump supporters often slip into the first person plural, like a tiny creature puffing up, trying to look bigger, adding heft—in their own minds if nowhere else—to their taunts. "We read your column and have to chuckle..." 

      I try not to do this, try not to conjure up imaginary friends and dragoon them to nod in approval behind me. Try not to fall into the trap of those, as Thoreau so neatly put it, "mistake their private ail for an infected atmosphere.”

     So I'm reluctant to announce that, five months into the pandemic, the public has entered into a new, brittle phase. It would be easy to do so: tempers are short, eyes narrowed, teeth grinding. Maybe they are, generally. It sure seems that way.

     Or maybe it's just me. Maybe 150 days of ... sitting around and writing stuff, with occasional forays into the living world, have made me ... slightly punchy. Ground down and hopeless. Certainly welcoming other people's expressions of strain, such as the sidewalk art above. The frustration, the fed-up-ness, detected in others. Not schadenfreude. I'm not glad they are unhappy. But rather, I am glad not to be alone.

     Just saying that gives me pause. "Unhappy." It's such a whine. Such an unwelcome development. I glided through the first four months of pandemic on gratitude. April, May, June, July. Not fake gratitude either. Real, genuine, got-a-job, not-sick, kids-at-home thanksgiving. Dissatisfaction seemed a rude gesture to everybody in worse shape. The sick. The unemployed. The friends and loved ones of the thousands and thousands dead. That's unhappiness.

     This is ... well ... what? Blessing fatigue? I'm glad I didn't go down with the ship, glad I didn't drown with the others, glad there's still some water left in the canteen. But boy this lifeboat is starting to feel cramped. And the sun....

    Blessed. I know that. Blessed blessed blessed. I would say, brightly, "I'm having a good plague!" And I was. Both boys home, finishing up their spring semesters, baking bread and playing Bananagrams. "A stolen season!" I would say. My job, clicking along, as far as I can tell. 

     And while all that is still true .... maybe it's the looming election. What are the chances of Trump being defeated and going quietly? I'd say even odds for the first, and no way for the second.  So fairly certain some cataclysmic historic foundation shaking in six dozen days, as the worst human being to occupy the Oval Office grabs the curtains and shrieks as decent Americans try to drag him out and throw him onto the dustbin of history. 

    Reason enough alone to be grim. And it might not even work. There is no guarantee that these aren't the good days, before whatever horrific Sixth Act shocker comes lumbering in from the wings. Heck, Russian tanks, rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue—laugh, sure. But who could be surprised by anything anymore? 

    So yeah, the bright spin is slowing to ... the slightly glossy creeping rotation. Like hands of a clock—tick ... tick ... .... ... ... tiiiiick—the steady march of the calendar. What? Aug. 23? You're kidding me? How did that happen? What? Still 2020. Will this never end? 

    What do to about it? I tore out some drywall Saturday. Water damaged, from a leaky radiator. Needed to be done. Well, I can't go on vacation, but I can do this... I thought. It wasn't fun, but what is nowadays?

    

Texas Notes: Ernie

      It's Saturday, which means EGD's Austin Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey checks in:

      Chances are you did not see the live mannequins posing in lucite boxes at Limelight, a club that stood for a few short years in Chicago in the 80s. Nor, some of you are thinking, would you have wanted to. 

      I, on the other hand, was in my late teens and felt like Madonna as my boyfriend and I got whisked inside as the friends of a 6’ tall model who worked the boxes. A goth woman dressed in black platform boots and a tiny black mini skirt stark against her milky white skin passed my boyfriend a little piece of blank paper. He somehow knew that it was her number in invisible ink. I missed the memo on that stealth technique so didn’t realize what had happened. He was so grandiose in his 21 year old glory that he bragged about it to me. I took the paper, ripped it up and threw it away. Ah, the good old days of being a club girl. My priorities were really in order.
     My then-boyfriend— I’ll call him Ernie— was in Chicago without proper immigration papers from Coahuila Mexico. After running away from home at the age of 18 (after my freshman year at DePaul) and telling my folks that I was moving in with a gay friend, I lived with Ernie and his two friends, also immigrants to Chicago. We drank tequila and grilled cheap cuts of beef on the grill on the back porch of our little apartment on Belmont near Damen. We played cards until the sun came up, watched TV, went to the park to throw balls around, and threw big parties. 

     When we met, Ernie told me that he was from Spain with a wealthy father and a 13 bedroom house. He was tall and had long black hair, and was quite the fashionista. I bought it, hook, line, and sinker until one day he said he had something to tell me. He asked me to sit down on the bed with him. Silently he passed me a black and white photo. I recognized him as a much younger man, and he was surrounded by a dozen more children and a plump and warm-looking woman, his mother. I’d listened to him talking to her on the phone for hours each week so many times that I understood every word he said to her, and I felt I knew her. Somehow I never learned to speak Spanish, to my regret. As I looked at the photo he revealed that the family I was looking at was his family in his home city of Piedras Negras. He had been afraid to tell me that he was born in Mexico. 
     One day Ernie came home in tears— the man who owned the retail store he worked for had died in a fire, right in the top level of the business. There was talk of suicide as the business was going under and the owner had his children to think about. It was a very, very sad day and took Ernie months to start to recover from. Thankfully, a man who owned a similar business a few neighborhoods to the south of us quickly gave Ernie a new job. There was a whole underground system that employed a crucial part of the backbone of our society. Sad that they had to live in fear while the oblivious shoppers happily purchased the large items folks like Ernie sold and loaded onto their backs and into trucks to be delivered to the homes of the privileged. These men had no days off, no PTO, no health insurance. They were grateful to be employed and they all sent most of their income back home to their families. Even Ernie at the young age of 21. This is the sole reason he moved to Chicago, to support his mother and siblings.
     I moved on from this relationship when I found out that Ernie had been dating another club girl; for six months by the time I discovered the truth. I was on the couch watching TV on a Saturday morning while Ernie was at work, and the landline rang. I answered. When she heard my voice the first question she asked was “who is this?” I said “Ernie's girlfriend.” She said “This is Ernie’s girlfriend.” 
      I got the essential details so he could not attempt to gaslight me— they had met at Avalon, a club on Belmont and Sheffield, when I was in the ladies' room. I remembered her. He and I had been admiring her style. I called for help and a nice lady named Dawn who I worked with at a luggage store on Michigan Avenue came right over to pack me up while I cried, and we got out of there. I had first called Ernie at work to tell him that I knew, and I was leaving. He rushed home and made it before Dawn and I had loaded up the last of my things into her car. He cried and pleaded and lied and told me he loved me. Good thing Dawn was there, a step-aerobics instructor in her spare time and quite tough. She shooed him away, ushered me into the car, and off we went. 
     Her roommate Paige met us there and they helped me settle into their spare bedroom in a rambling vintage apartment on Sheridan Road near Loyola , where they were students. The room had French doors that opened up onto a stone balcony, and a big, blue, soothing fish tank. We watched soap operas, hung out at Hamilton’s bar, spent nights in Barrington where some of their friend group lived, and I started to feel normal again. When Ernie came by with roses and tears they sent him away as I ran out the back door to the Lunt beach. 
     Years later I learned that Ernie and our roommates had not paid the last gas bill, and before I was able to turn the gas on at my new place the bill would have to be settled to the the tune of over $400. I knew where he was working and called the store. When I got him on the phone I demanded that he pay the bill. Within an hour he had paid it, in person, at an outpost on Milwaukee Avenue. I did not want anything more to do with him even though he tried although was already dating someone else. He said he’d leave her for me. I was too smart for that. Years later I somehow found out that he had married this lady, a cute Jewish woman who was a teacher and cheerleading coach at a high school on the northwest side. I hope he and his family in Chicago and in Mexico are doing well today.

‘Choose hope over fear,’ Biden says. We should believe him

     The paper asked me to write a short column for Friday, reacting to Joe Biden's acceptance speech at the end of the Democratic National Convention, with a hard deadline of 10 p.m. Thursday.
      So how does that work? Well, the key is assembling ahead of time. What is called "A-matter"—information that can be plugged into the column. Or in my case, preparing what I think of as a "holding column," a version that could go in, even if he didn't speak by 10 p.m., which I use as a framework.
      At 9 p.m., I plugged in information from the first hour, and then sat to see if Joe would start speaking before the witching hour. At 9:50 I phoned in: Could I have until 10:05? Sure. Biden began at 9:52, and luckily he weighted some of his most powerful remarks up front. At 9:55 p.m. I bolted upstairs, got the column together, wrote a headline and moved it at 10:02. Faster than I like to work, but what the circumstances required.  Then I went up to watch the rest of the speech. It was an exciting, hopeful, perfectly-measured address, and gave me hope that we just might drive our traitor-in-chief from office.
      "Trump isn't going to just roll over," I told my wife after. Now we face the cornered beast.

     ”Keep the faith, guys,” Joe Biden said early in the fourth and final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention on Thursday, talking to four union workers in a video.
     Biden later accepted his party’s nomination for president, promising, “I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness.”
     The whole night was a powerful, unexpected yet effective blend of religion and humor, of Common and John Legend singing “Glory,” and Julia Louis-Dreyfus hosting and delivering probably the sharpest line of the night:
     ”Joe Biden goes to church so regularly that he doesn’t even need tear gas and a bunch of federalized troops to help him get there.”

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Back to, well, not normal, per se....

     I visited a museum for the first time in over five months —since catching the El Greco show March 9 at the Art Institute. On Wednesday, I stopped by the Chicago History Museum to do some digging in its archive, and left myself some time to see the exhibit of Sun-Times photography. It was like a visit with old friends, not only photographers I had worked with—Bob Black, Robert A. Davis, Bob Ringham, Bob Kotalik (you had to be named "Bob" to shoot photos for the Sun-Times, apparently). Kidding, there were non-Bobs as well: John H. White, Al Podgorski, Rich Chapman. 
     While I was at it, I took in the rest of the museum. That felt very normal, as much as anything can feel normal anymore. Yes, there were more guards than patrons—I counted three museum goers: a couple and their child. But some interesting new exhibits: a look at Chicago design keyed to the 1933 Century of Progress Fair, and "American Medina," a thorough exhibit of Muslim life in Chicago. 

The Pioneer

     

     In the permanent exhibit, they have what has to be one of the key artifacts in both the commercial and technological history of Chicago: the Pioneer, the very second-hand locomotive that arrived here on a ship—since there were no tracks connecting the train-happy East with the train-free Midwest—and chugged west, from Kinzie Street, on Nov. 20, 1848, heading 10 miles to what is now Oak Park, carrying the first men to leave Chicago by train. On their return, one passenger, Jerome Beecher, spotted a farmer driving a load of hides and pelts, negotiated a purchase, and took them back to the city. And so it began.
     It's a miracle the train survived and is here, so small and colorful and cute, compared to the giant locomotives to come. The Pioneer worked for about 25 years, then was tucked away. Someone must have recognized its value; the Pioneer was displayed at both the 1893 and 1933 fairs.
   That was the highlight. The research itself was a dry well: searching for a needle in a haystack that did not in fact contain a needle, at least not anywhere I could find it.  Ah well. If you caught a fish every time you dropped a hook into the water, you'd eat well, but what would happen to the joy of fishing?

Dems manage not to screw up convention, yet

     If Republicans gambled their souls that they’d be able to control Donald Trump and lost, forfeiting everything they once valued, Democrats seem committed to beating them by doubling down on who we are and what we represent.
     That’s a bet I’ll take.
     Because if we’re gonna lose, let’s lose wagering on our best selves.
     If the United States of America is really going to deal itself four more years of tinpot demagoguery, conspiracy craziness and whoops-somebody-broke-it incompetence — don’t kid yourself, Donald Trump is still president and presidents usually get re-elected — Democrats can comfort ourselves that, at least on the first night of their 2020 national convention, we bet on who we are.
     In a display of messy inclusiveness, the typically marginal and dispossessed were shoved front and center. Those who still, despite everything done to them, insist on believing that America becomes great, not because of a slogan sewn on a hat in China, but by doing great things.
     Yes, being Democrats, we stumbled out of the blocks Monday night.
     “Eva Longoria?” I thought, settling before the TV. “Why am I seeing a ‘Desperate Housewife’?” For a terrible moment, I thought we had stolen a page from the Republican playbook, and she would Vanna White us through two hours of politics as reality television.
     But Longoria radiated dignified conviction, or at least a good imitation, and soon the screen was broken into a Brady Brunch grid of pledging, singing faces, then cut to a prayer to Jesus — which I suppose we can let pass. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
     This festival of inclusion seems a pre-emptive counterbalance to next week’s Republican “It’s a Small, Small (White) World.” It’ll be interesting to see, as the convention unfolds, if this is indeed a tone-setter, or a one-off, something gotten out of the way. Whether the message continues, or is the convention version of the old schedule-the-public-policy-program-at-5-a.m. Sunday gambit.

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Flashback 2011: Neither snow, nor rain, nor Congress . . .

     While I don't want to suggest that the Donald Trump era is anything other than a flaming swan dive into unprecedented widespread disaster, it isn't as if we didn't cope with these issues before, to a lesser degree. The government certainly was busy kneecapping the postal service long ago, while President Clownshow was still hosting "Celebrity Apprentice."

     I'm passing this along to offer some background, and as a nostalgic look back at when folks still worked downtown and bumped into stuff, a dynamic I fervently hopes returns very soon, along with good government and an operative mail system.

     Like you, I didn’t think much about it when the U.S. Postal Service announced it might need big cuts.
     Who gets mail anymore? When was the last time you got a letter you were eager to read? Junk mail, bills — we pay most of ours online. The volume of first class mail has dropped 25 percent in the past four years.
     Sure, people feel residual affection for the local postman, whose job harkens back to an era when there was a milkman and a butcher and a baker and a candlestick maker.
     But postal carriers (I’ve always disliked that term; PC, sure, but it makes them sound as though they’re transmitting postalosis) are like Congressmen: you have affection for your own, but as a group they can go hang.
     Then I turned a corner this past Tuesday and saw 500 postal workers gathered in front of the Thompson Center, a crowd of zippered blue sweaters and sensible shoes.
     I might have kept going, but they seemed to be chanting to reduce funding to their own retirement health care. That made me pause.
     In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, designed to increase the post office’s flexibility. Tucked in was a provision forcing it to fully fund its retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, which costs the postal service $5 billion a year; another payment was due Friday. In the past it borrowed — this one it missed.
     Now a bill, HR 1351 — stalled in our gridlocked Congress — would end the obligation to fund health care for employees the service might never hire and audit the situation.
     “We don’t want no handouts, we don’t want no bailouts,” said Sam Anderson, president of the Chicago branch of the American Postal Workers. “All we want is our money.”
     The postal service has about 600,000, down 110,000 through attrition. Earlier this year, it floated a report suggesting the work force will have to be decreased “more aggressively,” according to Chicago district spokesman Mark Reynolds.
     “It suggested we need flexibility in terms of layoffs to stay alive and hopefully profitable again.” Layoffs would need Congress’ approval, which is pending, in the form of HR2309, which would allow the postal service to void its union contracts, fire people at will, close post offices and contract delivery.

     “It would destroy the postal service,” said Mack Julion, president of the local branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers.
     It would also be a kick to the struggling African-American middle class. The protesters at the Thomson Center were overwhelmingly black — Julion estimated that some 70 percent of letter carriers in Chicago are African American. This potential impact is one area where management and unions agree.
     “The postal service has been a gateway to the middle class for generations of Americans; my grandfather used to work for the post office,” said Reynolds. “When the American economy sneezes, the black economy catches a cold.”
     “It’ll hurt,” said Julion. “It is a very diverse workplace.”

     The unions insist that, without the funding obligation, they would be profitable, to the tune of half a billion since 2006. Eliminate the funding requirement, problem solved.
     Not so simple, says the postal serivce.
     “The unions believe if we get money back we’ll be fine, that we don’t have to reduce delivery [to] five days and close retail units,” said Reynolds. “We don’t believe that. We want long-term legislation to address operational ability. We could save $3 billion a year by going to five-day delivery.”
     The post office is a national resource, and to simply let it fall apart seems risky.

   “We’re still important because, No. 1, everybody isn’t online and everybody isn’t going to be online,” said Reynolds. “No. 2, we deliver everywhere. We serve the bottom of the Grand Canyon, we serve people living on summer cottages in Lake Erie islands, we do it through rain and sleet and snow — that’s 150 million delivery points we service. When the post office was created 200 some odd years ago, the notion this would bind the nation together, as the nation has grown we have continued to fill that purpose. We are additionally the straw that stirs the drink of a trillion-dollar mailing industry. Two of our biggest customers are UPS and Fedex — they’ll deliver packages to local post offices and we take the packages to the customers. America still relies upon the postal service and we still want to be here for America.”
     The future, though, can’t be chanted away.
     At the rally, a reader from Indiana came up to say hello. I asked her why she was there. “I got an email telling me about it,” she said.     
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 2, 2011