Stretch and snap
Get that Indian. Or that Indian imitator. You know, the one that cried at the landscape.
That darn mail girl postal employee needs her awareness stirred. (What’s the correct term? Mail carrier? She isn’t male and often doesn’t. )
This isn’t her. This mail carrier is official uniform without “keep your distance” headphones on.(1919 mail carrier/USPD/Commons.wikimedia.org)
How hard is it to take the rubber bands off the mail bundles and then place those rubber bands in a container in the truck instead of dumping them all over the ground? Piles of them. Day after day.
It’s littering. You’d think she’d snap to that.
- Caught littering items that weigh up to five pounds — including biodegradable items such as apple cores — it is a Class C misdemeanor and a fine of up to $500.
- There’s additional penalties depending on the weight and amount of trash, with fines going upward to $4,000 with 180 days to 1 year in jail.
“If you litter in Texas, get ready to pay for your crime” (Star-telegram article on new bill, Sept 1, 2017)
- Complain about at a restaurant and they might spit in your food.
- Complain about your mail carrier, and your mail / packages might be at risk
Now this is more her expression if she can’t avoid looking at you. One of my neighbors says we ought to ask the Postal Manager to split her salary among us since we all spend so much time delivering mail and packages placed in our mailboxes by mistake.(1917 Clara Page in her official mail carrier uniform /USPD/Commons.wikimedia.org)
I could dress up and recreate the famous Keep America Beautiful scene in front of her, but doubt she’d have clue.
Probably report me to the ACLU or someone for cultural insensitivity.
More likely use “crazy person on the block” and refuse to approach our mailbox cluster.
Resigned to grabbing rubber bands out of the mouths of malamutes and beaks of birds.
Snappy sigh
Phil, the Philosopher Mouse of the Hedge
OK I know the Iron Eyes Cody, the actor, was really an Italian-American – but since Monday was Columbus Day (He was from Genoa even though he sailed for Portugal and Spain), Italian-American Heritage Day (There is one of those, right? Everyone has their day.), maybe it’s OK to look past the past – a sort of cultural diversity acceptance that we are all the same when you really come down to it: two eyes, two ears, nose, same number of appendages, eyebrows , feet that touch the ground – all that important stuff.
- This Day in History (The wins and woes of Columbus. History.com 2018.)
- “Columbus Day, yes. Indigenous People’s Day, no” (Washington Times 2018)
Molly Malamute is very interested this U.S. dog sled mail team. Her people. Or she’s interested in cold weather and pulling stuff. She loves pulling….and all she has is one person at the end of the leash. So unfair.(Nome, Alaska,1906/USPD/Commons.wikimedia.org)
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Philosopher Mouse of the Hedge 
Well, you know, as long as we can find fault with everything everyone does and make them pay for it, we’ll all be happy. Right? 🙄 Just happy that I’m sending this message to you without a rubber band in sight!
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Easily amused here. (It was a bit of a joke – we’ve gotten used to seeing her supervisor trail along behind her in another postal car…probably after someone snapped a pix of her zooming around corners with the back door open and mail sliding everywhere…got to be a daily sight early in the summer. )
This was something of a joke /observation that many complain about not caring for the environment, but are reluctant to do even little things to help. Can’t make laws for everything (I was surprised at the updated littering laws – who knew?) – the decision to do better has to come from individuals themselves.
Meanwhile the neighborhood is simply picking up the piles rubber bands and putting them in the outgoing mail slot – ready to be reused right at hand. Maybe she’ll snap to that.
Som of the school moms are the most irritated as the kids are picking them up and popping each other with them. It’s the “you’ll shoot out your eye” syndrome?
Anyway, thanks for bouncing back with a comment
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we had a love&hate relationship with our post(wo)man… but since we can bring all mail sand parcels inside we have a kind of party truce… ;O)
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The Weim around the corner from us when I was growing up used to dive through the closed front room plate glass window every so often. He did not like substitute mail carriers. When ours went on vacation, they started leaving notes at the post office to not deliver the mail – that resident would come pick it up. Our street was like a cartoon sometimes. Thanks for stretching a comment to fit just right here
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I’ve always had great postal deliverers (aka mailmen). When I was a child, I used to follow ours around the neighborhood, and he even let me come to his home out in the country to play with his children (I was an only child) and ride the horse.
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Growing up, each summer we would wait on the front porch with a glass of lemonade for the postman. It was a big deal to us. He was a really nice guy and back then they walked from house to house instead of having 30+ mailboxes in a clump on a corner so residents walk over to collect mail. (Wish ours had some sort of roof over it). The old fashioned mail carrier was a little like the sun – you could tell the time of day by him. Having a friendly one and one that would interact like yours did helped make the fabric of life and neighborhood back then. Thanks for carrying a comment this way
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It’s not our postal folks we complain about (ok, maybe the substitute one who leaves our mail three streets down) but our newspaper delivery person. He throws out the yellow plastic bands that are around the papers. There are bands all over (until a resident picks them up). This past weekend some newspapers got away from him and there were newspaper page looking like paper mache all over the neighborhood. He drives a car. How hard is this? BTW there is a birds nest right outside a bedroom window and it looks like one of those yellow bands is in it. Hopefully it doesn’t kill anything.
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Paper mâché! I can see it. They use long plastic bags for individual papers here, but most have given up subscribing because the delivery guy must get tired before he gets to our maze of streets and “Forgets”.
I hadn’t thought about bird danger until next door lady mentioned it (as she was picking up rubber bands.) We’re in the middle of fall migration and a good number of bird flocks are also sheltering here until the storm leaves Florida. We’ve had birds flying in from 2 distinct directions this week. Poor little guys. They are all hungry and the brown bands look like worms (except there’s not ants on them…) This is a designated bird sanctuary and people try. No outdoor cats off leash allowed around the lake and wetlands. We didn’t realize that when looking at houses, but RC was an extreme climber and we didn’t let her out anyway.
We do have to watch Molly as she will snatch any band she can reach and wave it around in her mouth like a naughty toddler daring us to grab it. Not a good trick.
There’s other issues with this carrier, but the retired Scottish guy across the street (who hates waste and trash) and the young German dad (who hates inefficiency and things not running like a clock..and misdirected packages and mail) will figure out something. We have a sitcom street.Thanks for adding your stamp on a comment
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I think you and your neighbors need to find out where she lives, gather up a years worth of the rubber bands she’s dropped… and dump them on her porch, or in her car. And if she has a pool? Even better. Make them her unsightly and eco-unfriendly mess!
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The neighborhood is running a contest of what to do with the rubber bands…moms vetoed the kid made sling shots using tree forks.So far the front runner is looping the bands together into rubbery “chain-type” necklaces and all of us running up to the mail carrier one day and tossing them over her head – like Hawaiian leis! What do you think? Thanks for wandering over and stopping to chat.
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I think a rubber lei would be a wonderful fashion accessory!
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I’d never thought about that kind of litter. We must have (1) super-conscientious mail carriers, or (2) super-conscientious maintenance people. Or just lots of people who pick up rubber bands.
All this littering talk has reminded me that it’s almost time for the anti-littering holiday song. You know — the one about the restaurant.
We always gave lemonade and cookies to our carriers, too — and a cash Christmas gift in a card. I miss that.
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I think you have a different carrier. Ours usually shows up about 6:30 pm…we are wondering what if she’ll change times with daylight savings time. Always a circus around here.
(You’ve gotta love that song!)
I miss that, too. What will kids have to look back at their childhood and smile about? Organized sports and various activity lessons and after school daycare don’t seem to have the same potential.
Thanks for bringing some cool and crisp breezes with you on your return!
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Wait. What?!?!? Iron-Eyes Cody was Italian-American??? There goes another piece of my 70’s childhood innocence. It’s nearly as bad as discovering Maria on Sesame Street wasn’t really named Maria? *sigh* (Those people singing “I’d like to teach the world to sing” were really enjoying Coke though, right?)
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My mother-in-law is a junk mail junkie. The delivery guy and all of the postal office people up town give me heck about how my mother-in-law gets more mail in one day than all of the businesses in town. I’m sure it is true. Our delivery fella always has a stack for her, and she always acts exasperated about the amount… yet we all understand, it’s probably all she has to look forward to in a day. I used to get on her about the rubberbands laying around the mailboxes at the street. SHE is the one that drops them at the boxes or leaves a trail down the driveway we share. Wildlife picks them up sometimes you know. She’s never picked them up so I do.
She also has a habit dropping her used Kleenex everywhere. GAH!
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Talking of littering reminds me about the Mayor of North Sydney back in the mid 1980’s. He was sick and tired of the way people littered up his streets and footpaths, dumping their lunch wraps and other garbage in bins overflowing. He solved the problem;
He had every garbage and waste bin around North Sydney removed, it worked. People had nowhere to discard their rubbish so they took it with them, and disposed of it either at work or at home and North Sydney had the cleanest streets in all of Australia.
This Mayor went on to become the only 100% honest politician this country as ever had, a marvellous man
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I know you take interest in many things phil here’s a link to that Mayor I mentioned, you might like it, perhaps POTUS should emulate this man Ted Mack.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Mack_(politician)
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I had thought it odd when one of our mail carriers left the rubber band on the mail. What a huge improvement over what you have.
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Better you get that band, than toss it on the ground.It’s baffling to me how so many declare the environment must be protected, yet they don’t do the smallest things to do that – like recycling and how about “collecting” rubber bands on your wrist until back at the reuse bin at the office or home.
Little things do add up. Thanks fro stretching a comment to fit here
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