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The plight of postal service everywhere

Yes, it’s another entry on the postal system.  I like the postal system, okay?

I read this article.  It makes me really sad.  And I’m afraid the article may describe the sentiment of a lot of people in the US and so I’m afraid of what it might mean for the future of the USPS.

Canada Post employees recently went on strike to protest a dramatic wage cut.  In response, management locked them out and so Canada hasn’t had a functional mail system for about three weeks.  And now people are saying that maybe they don’t need the postal system anyway because there’s email.  Well, I don’t know the ins and outs of Canada Post.  I don’t know the details of the strike or the subsequent lockout.  I do know that a lot of my Canadian friends frequently complain about its reliability and delivery times.  Even in the midst of complaining though, they don’t want to do away with the postal system.  They just want the USPS to take over.  Apparently the USPS is the envy of the postal world?  I probably could believe that.

Anyway, according to the article, the sentiment among the vast majority of Canadians is that they no longer need a postal system and by going on strike, the postal workers have sealed their fate and showed everyone that they can live without the postal system.  People the reporter interviewed all seemed to believe that if they really needed to get something done, they could just go online to do it.

“I do all my communication through the Internet so I don’t miss the mail,” says Eddy Banakar, a manager of a high-tech company. “But the postal job is an uncomplicated job, and at the same time they get good salaries. So I don’t think people have much sympathy for them.”

So this is a quote that really irks me.  I agree that the postal job is “uncomplicated” in that you probably don’t need a Ph.D. to fulfill the job requirements, but that sounds really dismissive to me.  Just because the job is uncomplicated doesn’t mean that it isn’t important or that it’s easy.  Working as a “sanitation engineer” probably isn’t a very complicated job either, but it’s a really important job to society (thank you, employees of Waste Management) and it’s hard work.  The quote makes the guy sound like you have to be a manager of a high-tech company to be paid a good salary.  He probably doesn’t have to do a lot of manual labor.  So people with white collar jobs are the only ones who are allowed to have good salaries?  Hard, physical labor doesn’t count for anything, even when it’s vital to a functional society?  (Maybe the guy didn’t mean that.  Maybe the reporter took the quote out of context or spun it.  But still, it irks me.)

Also, postal workers have high stress jobs.  Can you do what they do?  I’ve mentioned before that the USPS does some pretty amazing stuff and so has my friend.  I assume that Canada Post has to do some similarly amazing stuff.  Maybe not as well, judging by the complaints, but Canada has a LOT of rural areas.  And how about the Yukon or Northwest Territories?  That’s like delivering things in Alaska.  That doesn’t sound easy to me.  And people in the rural areas of Canada deserve to get their mail too.  The postal workers are important and they deserved to be paid accordingly.

Important or not, maybe they are being overpaid.  I don’t know.  Corporations everywhere are strapped for cash right now and it’s true that people are utilizing their postal system in different ways now so that first class mail can no longer be counted to bring in the bulk of revenue.  Changes are probably necessary and the changes will probably hurt, but it doesn’t mean a whole postal service should be scrapped.

So…I’m campaigning again to save the postal system.  The USPS in particular, and other postal services will be a bonus.  Might I recommend swap-bot to you again?  Or if crafting is not your thing or is too stressful, how about postcrossing?  All you have to do is write a postcard, not even a full letter.  I think letters are ok though.  I’ve only sent one postcard thus far so I’m by no means an expert.  Or maybe you like to read and are out of interesting books to read?  Maybe you have too many books and would like to share them with people who would like to read them?  How about bookcrossing?  See?  Lots of excuses to go support your postal system right now.  You should definitely go do it.

How to cut a really large circle from cloth without a pattern

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you needed a really large circle (or several really large circles) of cloth and yet the pattern you had just been using to make these circles inexplicably disappears?  No?  Well, I have.  And should you ever find yourself in a situation requiring a large cloth circle and you have nary a pattern around with which to make it, you can be thankful that you’ve read this tutorial on how to cut a very large circle out of cloth without a preset pattern.

Materials:

  • enough cloth for your really large circle
  • tape measure
  • scissors
  • straight pins
  • iron/ironing board

Procedure:

  1. Determine how large you need your circle to be.  I needed a circle that was 20″ in diameter.  That means the circle has a radius of 10″.  (You know, d=2r.)
  2. Fold your cloth into quarters, making sure that each side is at least the length of the radius of your circle.  This way you only need to draw out a nice arc that is a quarter of the circle, instead of drawing four nice, perfectly matched arcs to make a circle.
  3. Iron down the creases.  You’ll want nice, sharp creases to get a cleaner, circle-ier circle.
  4. With the beginning of your tape measure firmly fixed on the corner of the single fold, mark out the radius along the cloth.  The more marks you make, the more accurate your circle will be.  Also, be sure that the beginning of your tape measure is in the correct corner!  You want all the loose edges away from the beginning of the tape measure.
  5. Connect all your marks in an arc.  Or don’t if you think you can eyeball it.
  6. Pin all layers of the cloth together near the edge, making sure that everything is smooth and even, and cut along your mark.  If you don’t pin, you may get a very strange looking circle indeed.
  7. Unfold your freshly crafted circle and iron out the creases, if so desired.

I had actually doubled up the cloth and made two 20″ diameter circles at the same time.  This is really thin cotton though.  I wouldn’t recommend doing that if you’re working with heftier cloth.  Your circles will come out slightly oblong and be different sizes.

Incidentally, right after I took all the pictures for the tutorial, I found the pattern I made for 20″ circles.  It was sitting smugly on my bookshelf the entire time.  So annoying.  Also, you could do this with basically anything out of which you need to make a large circle.  You might want to leave the ironing steps out for things like paper and stuff, though.

Why do I need such large cloth circles, you ask?  It’s a secret.  But my secretive projects are nearly finished.  So…soon…soon shall be the reveal…