Today turned into a sleep-deprived OCD thrashfest of content and desperation. I spent most of the day combing the July, 1920, issue of The Etude music magazine looking for neat stuff like Mary Gardner’s interview and this exploration of the vanity of nervousness among artists. I also annotated some of the coolio Matchbook Covers with New York City Telephone Exchange Names I started collecting a few months ago.
In the abovementioned issue of The Etude I spotted this strangely naked relic, an advertisement for the Buescher True-Tone Saxophone:
Buescher True-Tone Saxophone. Be the Tom Brown of Your Town
I spent this lovely day sitting at home, waiting for the USPS to deliver a package. I also spent the full day yesterday sitting here waiting for USPS to deliver that same package, watching the USPS trucks roll by, lunging toward the window to see if the truck that passed by was looking for me, and if it would stop and the driver would open its door to find my parcel and bring it to me. Today’s sitting-and-waiting made for 2 full days wasted sitting here waiting for USPS to deliver a package that should have arrived 2 weeks ago, a package which I can not afford to lose should USPS decide to return it to sender. I called USPS this afternoon to ask WTF, I’ve been sitting here for 2 full days, sunrise to sunset, waiting for the parcel, waiting for the package, waiting for the bounty. “Please do not return to sender,” I asked, please do not return that 45-pound monster to sender. Please! Do not return to sender! I have been sitting here for 2 days waiting for this thing. No matter the expressions of desperation, the USPS cannot approximate even the remotest estimate for a window of delivery time. If USPS attempts delivery the parcel could arrive at any time on Monday between the hours of 2am and 11:59pm, during which time I must sit and wait for another full day, waiting here on this spot within the 22-hour window of opportunity during which USPS might (or might not) attempt redelivery of this parcel. The parcel must be delivered lest the parcel be returned to sender. The new USPS default seems to be that delivery of parcels to residences is not attempted on the first pass, not attempted on the second pass, and that customers are expected to appear in person at the post office to retrieve their parcels. For a variety of reasons I cannot do that, not least among those reasons is that I have no obvious resource to move 45- and 50-pound boxes from point B to point A, and even if I did I thought it was the job of the USPS to deliver things? I maintain a P.O. Box partly to avoid this nonsense, partly to avoid the necessity of being physically present to receive delivery of packages and registered/certified/delivery confirmation mail, but even the fine folks who work behind that P.O. Box (which I have maintained as my permanent address in New York for almost 20 years) even those fine folks are giving me shit now, giving me shit for receiving too many items, causing too much trouble, being a drain on their resources. I hate to concede defeat to the USPS but I think I must. Things are changing, the USPS is over-extended, and people like me who use USPS a lot are the ones targeted for the poorest service. It makes me sad because one of the few life-lasting joys I know is simply getting mail. Pitiful but true. Now I feel I must scale back on this activity.
