Salute to the Postal Service

I’ve seen several mean-spirited editorial cartoons in recent weeks depicting the ineptitude of the U.S. Postal Service, which continues to lose billions a year. There is much moaning about the penny increase in the price of postage stamp that took effect on Sunday. That will do little to whittle the postal deficit.

Granted, post office honchos have been slow to react to technological changes that threaten its very existence. Much the same way the Internet has devastated the magazine industry, many people — especially young people — see the Postal Service as irrelevant. They don’t write letters. They don’t pay bills by snail mail. Even invitations are sent online these days.

And certainly the Postal Service has responded with glacial speed in plans to cut costs. Thousands of small post offices should have been closed years ago. Saturday mail service can’t be considered sacrosanct when viability is being considered.

But much of the criticism directed toward the Postal Service is unwarranted. Sure, I mistakenly receive a neighbor’s letter once in a great while. And on rare occasions it has taken longer than a week for a paycheck sent to me from neighboring Illinois to reach me in Missouri.

Yet, the Postal Service is reliable nearly all the time. Even on those rare days it’s too dangerous to travel to work, usually a vehicle pulls up to my mailbox delivering printed material. I can count on one hand the number of times that a bill, letter or package destined for my address or a payment, card or box from my house has been lost. The big benefit of mailing a letter or a bill is the low cost. There is no better way to get an envelope anywhere in the country fairly fast for 45 cents. It’s a veritable bargain.

Of course the Postal Service really may become important if something drastic happens such as dropping delivery to three times a week. That is a proposal on the table. What keeps it in business now is the timely delivery of magazines, newspapers, local advertisements, catalogs and the dreaded junk mail. If the Post Office tumbles, other industries may teeter on the brink as well.

Death of a Former POW

Recently I read the obituary in my hometown newspaper of 84-year-old Ted R. Sprouse, who spent virtually the entire Korean War as an American prisoner of war. Sprouse had a fascinating story, which I told in a lengthy newspaper article for the Fairfield (Iowa) Ledger in 1988. He had kept the memories bottled up for 35 years. I knew Sprouse both in his role as public works superintendent as well as a fellow attendee of church.

Sprouse had been wounded twice in the previous two days before his capture. The second injury, from a grenade, came moments after Sprouse prayed for the first time in his life to God, promising to serve the Lord if he made it back home. All other nine men in his group were killed by the blast. Sprouse had harrowing tales from his hostage years of near starvation, marching in sub-zero temperatures, failed escape attempts, deaths of fellow soldiers, near-fatal illness and abuse at the hands of his captors.

Once back home, Sprouse faced multiple medical problems. He also had fits of rage and excessive drinking — before making good on that promise he had made to God years later.

Five years after the newspaper article, Sprouse contacted me about writing a book on his life to tell things he wanted to get off his chest. He agreed that he wanted the book to be truthful, and, after extensive interviewing and other researching, I wrote a rough draft manuscript. Sprouse didn’t care for the proposal because it mentioned some unsavory details. For instance, he wanted to leave out the part about a fellow soldier divulging details to enemy guards that led to his capture after escaping. He also didn’t want to mention that when he arrived back home after three years as a POW he found his wife holding a one-year-old baby.

I argued that the importance of including all his painful and gruesome memories, because they all contributed to the anger that Sprouse felt as he spent years trying to forget the promise he had made about serving God. However, we couldn’t work out a compromise, and I walked away from the project, having naively not drawing up a contract for my efforts.

The obituary explains that Sprouse found someone else to write his book, published in 2000. I also see that the obituary mentions that he and his first wife divorced. That’s the wife he didn’t want to mention in the manuscript I wrote.

Tebow's Time

Now that the Denver Broncos have been eliminated from playoff contention, it’s time to weigh in with final thoughts on Tim Tebow.

Tebow energized the NFL during the midseason, becoming the starting quarterback for a team that lost four of its first five games and seemed destined for a last-place finish. Tebow, with a large assist from Denver’s defense, managed to guide the Broncos to wins in seven of the next eight games, including five miraculous fourth-quarter rallies and three overtime wins. Despite dropping the final three regular-season contests, Denver won its division with a mediocre 8-8 record.

Yet the miraculous returned in the first round of the playoffs when the Broncos defeated the heavily favored Pittsburgh Steelers — in overtime. Tebow clearly had the best game of his brief NFL career, becoming only the third quarterback in the history of the game to throw for 300 or more yards on 10 or fewer completions. He returned to earth with a thud last weekend against the New England Patriots.

Both Tebow’s defenders and his critics tend to miss the mark in their assessment of him. Both often overlook his football skills — or lack of them — and focus on his faith.

The unconventional quarterback’s detractors have been off base, accusing him of falsities. Tebow’s practice of bending on one knee to pray briefly on the field rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Showboating by Christian players has a long history, but in Tebow’s case his faith is genuine. He’s not a Sunday afternoon believer. Tebow, contrary to what his enemies claim, never has said that God wants him to win. He’s never exhibited a holier-than-thou attitude, on or off the field. He readily accepts criticisms of his sometimes-erratic play. He is kind in hostile interviews with sports reporters. He doesn’t lash out at those who mistreat him. In short, he is behaving as a Christian should behave.

The problem with displaying such a public faith, of course, is that it is open to mockery. When comedians and atheists engage in “Tebowing” for laughs, it becomes blasphemous.

Whether Tebow has staying power remains to be seen. Despite his multiple come-from-behind, last-minute victories in the just-concluded season, the fact remains that Tebow’s regular season statistics in quarters one through three are consistently dreadful. I hope he can improve next season; if not, he’s made 2011 one of the most interesting NFL seasons to watch.

Hail the Sweet Potato!

We’re still eating sweet potatoes harvested from our garden last fall. Sweet potatoes are one of the new trendy foods. They are nutritionally good for you and not that caloric.

They also taste pretty good, especially drizzled with a bit of agave nectar or cinnamon.
But the thing I like most about planting sweet potatoes in the back yard is their durability. We put some plants a few feet into the ground and watered once in a while. A few months later, presto! We pulled up a couple of dozen various sizes ranging from puny to ginormous. Few had any flaws whatsoever. And they have stayed tasty for several months before consumption.

Not so with other vegetation in our yard. Blueberries are time-consuming to pick and recover with netting so that the birds don’t eat them. Worms and bugs devoured more than half our tomato and kale crops. Peppers never seem to mature by the time growing season ends. And Japanese beetles devastated anything on our young plum and peach trees.

This year we will double the space allotted to sweet potatoes. I just hope the moles don’t hear about it.

A Weight Off

I suspended writing my blog a couple of months ago for a variety of reasons, including a lack of time to write it and a sense that I didn’t have enough interesting to say.

However, a couple of people told me they missed my online journaling. That has given my ego enough of an impetus to revive blogging, at least to give a weekly spin a whirl again temporarily.

On the one hand, blogging seems to be passé, narcissistic and braggadocios. On the other, it is an opportunity to be expressive and creative in a way that isn’t a possibility in my daily job as a news journalist.

All that being said, my exciting topic today is my weight. Pigging out during the Christmas break notwithstanding, I’ve lost 20 pounds in the past 365 days. I’m actually near being what is considered normal weight for my height. Not only that, I feel so much better. I’m not talking about self-esteem; I mean physically. I have more energy.

As my friend Jo Mather once told me after her own 20-pound weight loss, it’s as though I’m no longer hauling around a bag of potatoes that had weighed me down. I know what lifting a bag of potatoes onto the grocery checkout line conveyor belt feels like. No wonder I feel better.