Return to Sender

One of the more abrupt ways to learn someone has died is to have your letter to them returned to you with someone having drawn an arrow pointed at your return address with a handwritten, block letter message:

RETURN TO SENDER

Addressee Deceased

Also, to have the envelope bear a yellow ticker from the post office:

"RETURN TO SENDER

NOT DELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED

UNABLE TO FORWARD

I understand completely. I knew when I read on Tuesday January 22nd that Russell Baker had passed away the day before, that my note to him that I mailed on Saturday, January 19th would not have reached him. Monday, January 21st was a Federal holiday for the observance of Martin Luther King Day, and there was no mail delivery that day. No mail delivery, coupled with the weekend, no chance something was going to get from a NYC suburb to Virginia in time for anyone to read if they were to pass away on Monday. 

The obit said there were complications from a recent fall, so even if the mail was timed better, there was probably little chance it would have been read.

The handwritten note I mailed simply said 'The Solution.' It accompanied a copy of my then latest posting, 'The Shutdown',  about how the government shutdown resembled the newspaper strike of 1962/1963 and could be brought to a close by a cooking competition.

A Chef Ramsey cook-off was proposed between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump. If the president were to win, he would get the money to build the wall and the government would reopen. If the speaker won, the government would reopen and there would be no money for the wall. No appeals.

'The Solution' was of course a tongue-in-cheek offering. Satirical or not, it was but one of the thousands bits of advice volunteered about how to end the shutdown.

I once heard the question posed: does the earth gain weight? Does the planet weigh more at any given point in time than it did in the past? The answer is yes, the planet gains weight.

I have to think it gains weight because words have weight. And since there are so many words written and spoken on all subjects now, the planet is holding up remarkably well for gaining all the weight it does every day.

With the weight of all the words. earth should have trouble spinning and completing a revolution every 24 hours. When you get heavier, you don't move as fast as you used to.

But thanks goodness, not earth. With all the advice printed and spoken adding to the weight of the world, it keeps spinning. Even if no one wants to open the mail of someone who is now deceased.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com