1950 U.S.A. POSTCARD GOES UP TO 2 CENTS

9th February, 1950: A majority has been reached among the members of the United States House of Representatives regarding the hike in postal rates. As a result of a voice vote made on this day, sixty years ago, a bill was passed which had raised the rate of postal card rates from one to two cents. Regular letter rates would stay at three cents.

It was sixty years ago, today, and they haven’t looked back! Like the MTA in NYC, poor service and increases in the cost to run things only make a bad deal worse.



I met these two unrelated elderly people the other day, waiting for my doctor to open his office, in the middle of the Congo. The woman was very adept at taking public transportation, and the gentleman too, knew how to get around. The man was sporting a large backpack, and a cane. Walking and lifting his arms was difficult, but his spirit was very high, as was the lady’s. They were just nice people with some prejudice about how life is today, how the world treats them, and the fact that we seem to be losing our way as a people. One could see a vulnerability to their outlook, but they were making the best of it! Observations flew back and forth like a tennis ball in a tennis game.



Suddenly this ‘gentleman’ walks in about in his late 40’s. He was bald and you could see very into him, only. He never acknowledged the two elderly people, burying his fat nose in a catalogue, and at one point, while the old man was speaking, seemed annoyed and walked away!



Like the one-cent post card, common courtesy and respect is no longer in vogue. It got me thinking about things, and how much they are changing. Maybe I live too much in the past, but I talk to younger people, especially in their late 20’s and early 30’s, and they don’t seem to know their vocabulary, some very basic facts, and are only interested in cell phones, blue tooth and emails! The electronic world is making it so that they do not think, reason or have the slightest interest in things of beauty.



Very few are reading these days, although I see many young mothers taking their children to the library, it is for electronic devices for the child to learn from.

When I was in 5th grade in Kreamer Street School in Bellport, NY, I had a teacher: a Mr. Sullivan who took the books Tom Sawyer and A Christmas Carole, and read them to the class. It was the most fun I ever had in classroom attendance. For those moments that he read to us as a class, our imaginations built whole sets, with costumes and characters, which would rival the big screen! Not a peep was heard from anyone but Mr. Sullivan, as he took us up the Mississippi and into snow covered London town during the 1800’s.

I am hoping that instead of games, we will take these electronic marvels and re-introduce Hemingway and Faulkner, Shakespeare and Joyce once more, to a dying art, that of reading and writing.

Please read: http://jpantaleno.blogspot.com/ and another point of view. Written by a very astute gentleman and co-blogger, Jim Pantaleno, read what he has to say, then bookmark his page, it is always worth the read.

The price of things is going up, the price we will pay if we don’t show some respect for the elderly, the respect for literature and life’s lessons will eventually cost us even more dearly.