Box Toppers U.K. style

The Fuzz and the Knitwear

When I was a lad in the 1950s, cereal companies ran promotions for their younger cereal crunchers by asking them to send in one or two tops from cereal boxes, along with  25¢ for handling and postage, and voila, you would soon receive plastic frogmen to play with in the tub, or a miniature submarine that "fired" a torpedo through the bath water. These were offerings you couldn't pass up. At least not if you were an eight-year-old boy.

Well, that was one kind of box top offering. In England there is another kind of box topper, namely knitting figurines to fit on top of the mail boxes that are spread all over the United Kingdom. Apparently there are 115,500 mail boxes found in the country, and any number of them have these knitted toppers placed on them by the local women who knit.

The toppers remain there for a only brief period because it seems people steal the elaborate knitwear nearly as quickly as someone plops a topper on the top of a mailbox. 

There is an inimitable A-Hed piece in today's WSJ that makes use of an untold number of puns (I gave up trying to count them) to deliver the story as it has been "unraveling" across the United Kingdom.

And while the print edition shows us two of these mail box toppers in color, the online edition of the paper outdoes itself by displaying many more of the inventive, colorful creatures and objects that people keep placing on top on their local mail box tops, almost as fast as they are whisked away by the mail box topper knitwear bandits.

One confusing part of the story is that the pastime of decorating your local mail box is said to have "started in 2005, when Magda Sayeg knitted a cover for the front handle of her clothing boutique in Houston." Houston, Texas? Emphatically yes. I certainly missed that story.

The practice is called "yarn bombing" when everyday objects, not necessarily letter boxes, are draped in colorful knitwear shaped like bunnies, caterpillars, teddy bears, cave men...you name it.

Joanna Sugden tells us in the A-Hed piece that yarn bombing is practiced all over the world, but nowhere like it is in England. England apparently has more Miss Marple-type women who knit up a storm. Maybe it's the damp weather that keeps them indoors clicking away with their needles, or sitting on those lovely park benches

Some of the die-hard knitters have given up replenishing their letter boxes with knitted creations and taken to displaying them indoors in a less sticky-finger environment.

I've never seen an example of yarn bombing here in New York. In fact, the only knitted thing I've ever seen placed on top of something here is a covering for the spare roll of toilet paper found in the better homes I've ever been in.

It is doubtful the United States Postal Service would allow its letter boxes to be "yarn bombed." They wouldn't have to wait for someone to walk off with the creation. I have no doubt the F.B.I. would be called in to remove them thinking they might be a terrorist threat.

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Hart Island

Over the years I've read a few stories in the NYT about Hart Island, New York City's potter's field. The island, much bigger than I thought at 131 acres, sits off the coast of City Island, a residential strip of homes, restaurants, marinas and sail making outfits on Long Island Sound. If Hart Island were to fly a flag, it would be a Bronx flag.

Most New Yorkers, even those born here, never heard of Hart Island, but there it sits, awaiting burials of the unidentified and unclaimed dead that have come to make New York City their final resting place.

The latest Hart Island story to appear is by Corey Kilgannon, who on Sunday in the Metropolitan section, keeps us up-to-date on who is going to manage Hart Island in he future. The baton is being passed to The Parks Department. The Department of Human Resources will be tasked with the burials.

Mr. Kilgannon is obviously a veteran NYT reporter who seems to get to cover the plum general interest assignments, from the exploits of Murf the Surf and the Star of India sapphire heist from the Museum of Natural History a lifetime ago, to the junk yards at Willetts Point, the ever diminishing junk yards at Willetts Point, right next to Citi Field in Queens County, an outer borough of New York City, or at least that's how the NYT often refers to it and its other three cousins, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

Mr. Kilgannon and the assembled photos take us on a black and white tour of the island, as it is now, with some vintage photos thrown in. The online edition has some color photos, as well as a video panorama of the island. And as if to prove that graffiti can find its way onto anything in New York City—even an island graveyard that's nearly impossible for the public to set foot on—there is the image of  debris from demolished buildings tagged with black spray paint. Where there's a will, there's a way.

There are many things revealed in Mr. Kilgannon's fine, informative piece that I didn't already know. Fifteen crumbling buildings from the island's onetime use as a prison, a sanitarium, and a psychiatric hospital have been demolished, opening up enough space to continue the burials for many more decades. Currently, there are 1,100 burials a year, in unmarked plain pine coffins that are stacked three deep.

Up until 2021 inmate crews from Rikers Island were chosen to facilitate in these burials, with the morgue trucks being ferried over from City Island.

The transition plan is to have the island come under the domain of the parks department, while burials will still take place, just not with prison labor. Limited pubic access will be established, with cell phone navigational tools to better find graves. There are no grave markers.

Not mentioned in the piece is if Hart Island is still used as the nursery for the Parks Department, with a significant portion of its land set aside for growing trees and flowers for the city's parks. Before the buildings were demolished, I used to read that the space needed for the burials was slowly taking up space set aside for horticulture.

That part of the island's use got my interest when sometime in the '60s when I was a teenager at the family flower shop, we got a handwritten letter from an inmate who was inquiring about the possibility of post-incarceration employment, since they were working in the greenhouse at the prison and were soon to be released.

I don't remember where the inmate was writing from. I do remember that the person said not to write back if there was no chance of employment, which there wasn't. We had all we could do to make the business provide a living for us, let along hire someone in addition. I'm sure the inmate wrote to lots of businesses. 

And since at the time inmates were being used to work the landscaping end of Hart Island, as well as doing burials, I always wondered it any of the inmates in those details tried to get post-incarceration employment in the funeral or landscaping business.

After all, they were gaining experience.

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Tribute Obit

If I were important enough to rate a tribute obit on my passing, what photo would they use of me? 

It's a hypothetical question, since I really don't think between now and my passing, I'll do enough to create a need to cobble a tribute obit together and include a photo, or two if there's room. For sure at this point, there is no prewritten obit lying about on disk drive waiting for me to pass on.

I read the NYT obits daily. I scan the online edition before I even open the door and retrieve the print edition from the front lawn. Thus, I'm always looking at the head shots of the recently departed who did something worthy, notable, or bad enough that the editor of the page lobbies for the inclusion of their obituary at the daily meeting.

There are all kinds of photos that accompany these obits. Professional executive head shots with shadow lighting, with the subject seated at a desk, leaning on a desk, standing in front of an array of  books in a cluttered living area, whipping up something in a kitchen or laboratory, or a news photo of when they were in their prime from the era that created the need for the obit. Famous, for doing something famous.

One recent photo I particularly like is that of William Wulf, with a two-fisted grip of a handrail on a circular staircase of many stories. It looks like he's standing in the barrel of a huge gun.

Mr. Wulf, 83, was a pioneering computer scientist who worked with Arapnet, the precursor to the Internet we use so widely today. It's a great shot because it shows an image of someone who looks like they did what they did. It's also a fairly recent photo, showing that advancing age didn't seem to diminish Mr. Wulf's stature.

Photos of all kinds of poses and vintages dominate the tribute obits.  You find when the NYT does one of those "Overlooked No More" tributes—usually for  a woman—who passed away maybe as much as 100 years ago, but whose passing was hardly noticed, despite what might have been significant achievements, they've even managed to retrieve a very faded daguerreotype,. giving us an idea of what the subject looked like.

An example of that was when they did an 'Overlooked No More' tribute obit for Clara Driscoll, a designer of the glass lamp shades for Tiffany lamps in the early part of the 20th-century.

Maybe because I'm a sports fan, I like the photos that accompany the sport figures who have passed away. 

A recent one was for Dick Fosbury, who stunned the 1968 Olympics with his at-the-time unique "Fosbury Flop" of going over the high jump bar backwards.

I paid attention to the Olympics then, and marveled like everyone else that Fosbury was able to do what he did. I tried high jumping in high school and used the "scissor" technique, which eventually led to those who used a "barrel" roll over the bar.

I wasn't any good at it, and never competed in the event. I can almost still fell the strain the technique put on my groin. I can remember the announcers during the 1968 telling the youth of America to stop leaping over the back of their family coaches. They were ruining the cushions.

Sometimes the photo doesn't seem to fit the subject's achievements. Consider the one accompanying Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, the computer chip making company in today's NYT.

He is seen in the Silicon Valley Headquarters of Intel, posed with mannequins who look like they've just auditioned for Star Trek. The photo seems at odds with the man credited in 1965 with formulating "Moore's Law," that the capacity of computer chips would double at predictable intervals, making computers faster and able to hold more data, in effect eventually making them cheap enough for the mass market. It all came true.

We read in the obituary that in the 1960s a single silicon transistor cost $150. It didn't take long before eventually being able to buy100 million transistors for $10.

The print edition of Mr. Moore's obituary has yet to appear. But further down in the online edition he is shown next to a fairly large silicon wafer disk, likely capable of an untold capacity for holding something. It would seem to be a more fitting image to be next to than an exhibit of space-age mannequins.

As for myself, I really haven't given any thought what photo I would like to see of myself being used for a tribute obituary. Maybe because there is zero likelihood of there being a tribute obituary, at least one written by others.

But, should the need ever arise for some cosmic reason, perhaps a photo yet to be taken of myself at this keyboard, writing about other people who have passed away.

I might like that.

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Down Under

I have an Australian pen pal. Pen pal. What an archaic word: someone you communicate with with handwritten letters who lives far away and who each rely on a postal service to deliver those letters.

The Internet has obviously changed all that, with near instantaneous electronic delivery of messages. It's been a whole new world for decades now.

But despite being someone you can easily reach via Twitter (@jenking), Jennifer King campaigns for the written form of communication from senders all over the world. She has amassed quite a written following and gets mail with foreign postage all the time.

Our relationship began when the common interest in reading and writing obituaries was shared. Ms. King is a retired operating room nurse who segued into a career in of journalism, positive news and obituary writing.

Through Twitter she takes great  delight in posting photos and video of the wildlife that manages to live in Australia, indoors and out.

She lives in a suburb of Brisbane on the East Coast, not in the wilds of Western or North Territory, Australia. No Outback living. There is a significant human population around her.

Twitter followers have been treated to I think video of a kangaroo bouncing down her street, snakes in the garden, kitchen, and other parts of the house. Spiders and frogs of course make their surprise wanted and unwanted appearances all over the place.

I've teased her about this to the point that just recently she mailed me a postcard of a photo of three frogs so that I could have the experience of three frogs in my letter box. We've traded Christmas cards once, mine getting to her a few months after I sent it. Australia is really Down Under when it comes to the United States Postal Service. I have no idea when the card left the good old U.S.A., but it was months before it arrived in her mailbox. Her postcard to me, Air Mail, only took two weeks to reach me.

And what a card it is. Aside from the photo of the three frogs on the front, Jen's astounding block print handwriting is revealed. For someone who may not have been a doctor, but still worked in the medical profession, it is a breath of legibility. My print is barely decipherable. The script: fuhgeddaboudit.

Postal service in Australia is in more of a death spiral than it is here. And it is comparatively expensive. The cost of her air mail postcard to the States was $3.50 Aus, converting to $2.35 U.S. My Christmas card to her, first class U.S. Postage, was $1.45 U.S., converting to $2.16 Aus. That's nearly a dollar difference more expensive for Australians to send mail to us than us to them.

Jen will post images of the wide variety of mail boxes in Australia. Their more rural post offices are closing up. 

Years ago collecting stamps was a pretty active hobby. I myself got started on collecting stamps when my father gave me a small sack of foreign stamps that in the '50s probably cost $1.00. It held stamps from all over the world, still mounted on the square of the envelope they were ripped from. It got me started, eventually building up a U.S. Postage collection that I haven't now looked at in decades, sitting in the garage rafters. By the '70s I had pretty much quit the hobby.

We know there have been many photo and video essays on the wide variety of home mail boxes in use. Ours is a "King of Sweden" model that we have relied on for decades, mounted next to the front door. If it looks new, it is, because we recently replaced it two years ago.

It holds a great deal. When our oldest daughter was getting Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair and other huge magazines filled with photo shoot ads, they fit completely inside the letter box, staying dry, but straining the bottom with their considerable weight when dropped in the by letter carrier. Once I had to make repairs.

We now have AI computers communicating, so to speak, with humans, sometimes making a bit of vague sense. What has of course changed is the delivery method of the word. 

The written word is certainly not going away. Not with Jen around.

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Stuyvesant High School and the McCourts

Years and years ago my wife was reading Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. The book was on a desk in an upstairs bedroom and was spotted by one of the young lads from P.C. Richards who came to install a through-the-wall air conditioner.

This lad couldn't resist telling my wife that Frank was his creative writing teacher at Stuyvesant many years ago. And he couldn't resist telling the story of the time Frank came to class with a very visible shiner, courtesy of his current girlfriend's ex-boyfriend who took exception to losing his main squeeze to Frank.

I too went to Stuyvesant, but was gone by the time Frank set up shop there. I graduated in 1966. One of the English teachers I had for regular English was Henry P. Wozniak, The Woz, who also taught a creative writing elective, one I never took.

I'm only making mention of this because a Stuyvesant alumna, Laurie Gwen Shapiro, has written an endearing piece about one of Frank's younger brothers, Malachy, who now in his 90s and in less than great health, is hoping for one more St. Patrick's Day. 

It looks like he's going to get it, because he was recently kicked out of hospice care for not dying within the prescribed guidelines. Anyone who knows anything about the Irish will tell you that their time on earth is just to get to know enough people who will fill a funeral home at their wake. Even if they didn't like them. They don't care. As long as there's a good wake.

By the dates used in Ms. Shapiro's piece it's not hard for me to calculate that I graduated the year she was born. I tweeted her this tidbit (@lauriestories) and told her of Mr. Wozniak and that he came out of the closet one year, many years after I graduated, riding a Harley, wearing leather head-to-toe, with a pierced ear, greeting students in front of the old school building on East 15th Street.

To my surprise, Laurie quickly retweeted that she had The Woz for regular English. I didn't know he was still there in 1981, but so he was.

All of this of course proves my contention about us living on a Möbius strip: The P.C. Richards air conditioner installer had Frank for Creative Writing at Stuyvesant; Laurie had Frank for Creative Writing as well; I went to Stuyvesant, but graduated before Frank set up shop there as the Creative Writing teacher; the Creative writing teacher at the time I went there was Henry Wozniak, a teacher that Laurie tells me in her Tweet she had for regular English, as I did; Henry Wozniak, to little surprise to anyone who spent a day with The Woz, came out of the closest after leaving the school and greeted students one year in front of the 15th Street building (the old building), arriving on his Harley, dressed in leather from head-to-toe and sporting a pierced ear.

Here's hoping Malachy makes it past this coming Friday.

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The Most Expensive Place in Town

Main Post Office Flushing, New York on Main Street

The most expensive place in town these days is not the supermarket. It is the post office.

For anyone who hasn't bought a stamp recently, I'm here to tell you that first class domestic U.S. Postage is now 63¢. Yes Virginia, send that letter to Santa now with the wrong postage and naughty or nice, you'll never hear from Santa.

That was shock to me, because just a few weeks before it was 60¢. And shortly before that it was 58¢. Since January 2021 to now it has gone from 55¢ to 63¢. Only rockets and jet aircraft go up faster.

Not everything can be transmitted online. Sometimes physical paper has to travel to a recipient. Just got back from the post office where last week I got 50 Forever stamps for 63¢ each. I used to get a coil of 100, but there are cash flow limitations these days. And I do use direct online banking for some vendors.

When forever stamps were introduced, someone asked the financial advice question if buying a massive flock of stamps could be a hedge against inflation. At the time, increases were not expected to be great, and they were going to be far apart. So the answer was a no. Not so now. Ask your financial planner. 

Today I had to mail several copies of forms to someone that needed to be sent Certified/Registered Receipt Requested. To be sure, to be sure: $9.72.

Once upon a time the postal service was a cabinet position and was subsidized. Then, I think in the early 1970s it was set to stand on its own, to be run as a business. It is impossible to hand deliver mail six days a week to any address in the United States and make money doing it. It's like expecting the police and fire departments to make money responding.

Supermarket weekly circulars show up in the mail box, and I bet it's not costing ShopRite 63¢ to send each circular. First class postage is subsidizing the commercial postal users. And it isn't just one supermarket circular that gets here. At least six do, three of which are useful to my wife who makes the most out of coupon offerings so well that if supermarkets were casinos she'd be banned as a card counter through facial recognition.

During today's visit to the post office I noticed up on the plexiglass partition an offering of 20 "Cancer Stamps" for $15. I'm confused. If postage is 63¢, then 20 stamps would be $12.60. Perhaps the extra is a contribution to some organization for cancer research. Next time I'll ask.

Live long enough and of course you can remember when things were cheaper. Of course you made less money, but subway fare was once 15¢, a slice of pizza was 15¢ and postage was 3¢. Of course it was also Eisenhower's first term. Postage went to 4¢ during the second term. Egads!

Like the years on a calendar: how high can the numbers go?

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Underemployed

I've been feeling a bit underemployed lately. (I wonder if there a Labor Department statistic that measures underemployment.) In the past two weeks I've only been moved to write only one posting—about owls and hawks. I'm up-to-date with my newspaper reading consumption, but I seem to have hit a dry spell. I figured if I wrote about the dry spell it would prime the pump.

Pretty soon I'll be sitting on the couch, listening to music and going through today's WSJ and NYT, hoping something lights my fuse. When— hopefully not if— it does, it will appear here next.

--------------------------------------------

Oh-oh. Joseph Mitchell's famous bout of writer's block began with but a single day that became many.

--------------------------------------------

The dam has busted. See 'The Most Expensive Place in Town.'

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Giving A Hoot

As anyone who has been following the news recently, either through TV, print, or Twitter, you should know by now that a rare owl has escaped from his Central Park zoo enclosure and has been flitting around areas of Central Park.

Flaco, a Eurasian Eagle-owl has been capturing the attention of bird watchers and other citizenry with his tenacity and adaption to his freedom. It was initially thought that since he's been fed by zoo keepers—cage service if you will—that perhaps in the wild again he might forget how to feed himself. Not so.

Flaco has been doing fine, especially dining on the unlucky rats that he swoops in on. So far, he seems to have confined his flights and perching to Central Park. It is not known if there have been attempts to get him to Brooklyn to help NYC Mayor Eric Adams deal with the rat problem on a building he owns and rents.

The Mayor has had the irony of fighting City Hall himself over Department of Health and Building violations he's received over the presence of rodents at his property. He's spent beaucoup bucks on eradication, but there's still a problem. He's mitigated some fines, but paid others. An owl just might be the rodent eradicator he needs, if only Flaco would fly to Brooklyn.

Flaco is hardly the only owl seen in the parks. Bird watchers of all stripes have been posting photos on Twitter of their presence on tree branches and in hollows of tree trunks. If you look up and see an owl, it's more than likely a living bird rather than an empty cellophane bag of Wise potato chips blown into the branches. These owls don't litter.

Seen here is an Eastern screech-owl who has taken up residence in Inwood Park in upper Manhattan. And why not? These parks in Manhattan can be officially categorized as forests, especially Central Park. Who knew?

And it is not only owls that are taking up residence on the cheap from expensive vantage points in New York City. Pictured to the right are two Red-tailed hawks (Fred and Ginger?) perched in the north tower of the Beresford Apartments overlooking Central Park, looking very content resting between two stone cherubs.

Looking at the family cat I distinctly see similarities in poses, particularly around the ears and eyes between cats and owls. Cats can't turn their heads and suddenly see who's on their "six" like an owl, or spin their head around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, but the ears do act as radar discs, and pick up the faintest of sounds.

I wonder what cable channels cats and owls get.

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