ashes from hippos

Last week was a bit on the tense side, what with my family, G's family, and the families of many of our childhood friends being evacuated from the paths of the Southern CA fires. Depending on where each family's home was, they were forced to do little for 24-48 hours but sit with whatever few possessions they had gathered up and wait for the release of the next "homes destroyed" list that might have their addresses on it. Fortunately, our families' addresses never showed up on that list. Some of our friends and acquaintances were not so lucky.

It's surreal to turn on the news and see folks like Matt Lauer and George Bush standing in the neighborhoods where you went to pre-school, where you learned how to do pop-a-wheelies on your bicycle, and where you and your friends would take the trails up into the hills late at night and confess everything while looking out over the lights of a sleeping town.

Except, Matt and George don't see that town -- they only know it as a disaster zone, lot after lot of blackened rubble.

We've had bad fires threaten our hometown before. It's not something unimaginable, out of reach, like so many other potential disasters often seem. Both of our parents were evacuated in 2003 as well. One Fall, maybe a decade before, I was on the roof watering down the old wood shingles, trying to keep them from lighting up in case an ember blew over from the nearby canyon. Even earlier, in my pop-a-wheelie days, I remember hearing that a large fire had reached the nearby wildlife park and proclaiming macabrely that the ashes snowing down all over the streets were those of rhinos and hippos.

Because of this familiarity, and because there often tends to be advanced warning, threatening fires like these don't usually make me think tritely of life and death and the ephemeralness of it all the way other disasters tend to. Instead, they have me thinking about property. What could we bear to lose if it were all to go up in flames? What would we be thinking about as we sifted through the rubble once the politicians and reporters had gone back to their homes?

Sometimes I like to believe none of it would matter: that I could walk away and, so long as G were right there with me, the rest would all just be stuff -- just the objects that any two fortunate, middle-class people living fortunate, middle-class lives in a fortunate, middle-class version of America might choose to surround themselves with. But then I have a particularly tough day at work, or the weather is particularly unforgiving, or a particularly heinous accident unnerves us on the way home, and I come through the front door and shut it behind me and lock out the things I do not want to get to me and I realize all over again just how much there is to lose.

You see, ours may be a modest home by Californian standards, but it -- and the stuff in it -- offers us something that few other places on this planet can offer: protection from the world when we need it, whether it's protection from the elements, or from people who would hurt us, or cheat us, or argue with us, or don't think we're capable of achieving what we know we are; protection from big things but also little things -- from offices that are too hot or too cold, from trees that trigger allergies, from music with too much screaming, from uncomfortable chairs, from sheets that are too stiff, blankets that aren't soft enough, from boredom, from bad news.

The world as you want it: that's the real benefit of home ownership. A financial investment it may be, but if you're doing it right, it's an opportunity to create an envelope that seals you and your world from the one outside for just as long as you need.

It's true that if it all were suddenly to light up orange and then turn black and then grey and then to dust, you could eventually work your way back to creating another envelope in another home. And perhaps, with time, you might even feel that the new place was again impenetrable as the first. But that time in between? The loss seems overwhelming.

good headline

Yoda stamp the post office does release today

(That's the headline as it shows up in my news reader. The actual headline on the article is different, but still amusing.)

nightmares coming true

I gotta say, I always thought this was just an urban legend:

NYC Woman Finds Python in Her Toilet

redesign: the post office

As I stood in line at the local post office this afternoon, muttering under my breath at all the people in front of me -- in particular: the guy with the lamp that he decided to wrap only after reaching the counter; the woman with the home business who showed up with three sacks full of badly wrapped t-shirts to ship; and the two aging grandmothers who, separately, wanted the clerk to show them every single stamp design in the catalog -- I was reminded yet again of why I hate the post office so much, and why I only go once or twice a year when I have no other choice.

The only good thing about the experience is that it gives me a chance to daydream about how I'd redesign the place to make it more efficient. Here's my plan:

First, get rid of the one-line-fits-all-needs model. Break it up. When you walk in, you should see several clearly marked areas of the post office. Need stamps? Over here. Need to mail a letter or some documents? Over there. Need to send a package? That counter. Need bubble wrap? The packing table. Don't know what you need? The info desk. Right away, the wait time is reduced because you don't have to stand behind every single person in the building.

Next, rely more on self service. You shouldn't need to stand in line and talk to a clerk just to buy some packing tape. At the packing table, slide your credit card through a slot in a vending machine and pick your own supplies. Likewise, the majority of people don't need to talk to a clerk to send an international, express, or oversized letter. They just need to know what their mailing options are and how much each costs. How about a scale and a quick way to find out how much postage I need? (And no, I don't mean leave a scale on a table in the corner like they do now; the "quick way to find out how much postage I need" is critical.)

Finally, use technology. In the scale example above, why not let me set my letter on a kiosk that automatically measures the weight, scans the address, and gives me all my mailing options on a touch screen? Once I select an option and pay, the kiosk prints out a mailing label and I'm on my way. A similar kiosk system would work just fine for stamp buyers who want to see what else is available besides the American flag booklets. Now, your grandmother can flip through the entire catalog on a touch screen. Want to see more stamps with birds? Easy. Like the kittens? Here's more. What are other grandmas getting? We'll show you.

Of course, change requires incentive. And a postal service that has a $5.4 billion deficit is not about to invest in an overhaul of its customer service centers -- at least, not when it doesn't have to worry about competition. (It's the same problem with the DMV.)

Maybe then the biggest change the postal service can make to become more efficient is to open up standard mail delivery to competitors. Isn't the US long past the point where it needs to nurture the postal communications network? At this point, if a private firm can find a way to get a letter to my relatives' mailboxes faster and cheaper than USPS can, why not let it?

not related