Apologies for disappearing off the face of the earth! John and I had the best of intentions -New Year’s resolutions and all that! -to absolutely, positively write more this year….and then… life happened. He has professional responsibilities, and I’ll leave it at that— I, on the other hand, had… needlepoint???
Those of you who know me personally know that I am a needlepoint addict. It’s my relaxation-my way of letting off steam. (Or as my needlepoint pillow says, “Proof I can stab something 30,000 times”).
When I moved back to the NCR in 2018, I got drafted into a group of needleworkers that support Woodlawn, the manor house that George Washington built for his step-granddaughter, Nelly Custis, when she married his nephew Lawrence Lewis.
The house was the first to be preserved under the auspices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Two of the women on the initial board decided to exhibit their needlepoint to raise money (because Nelly was considered to be among the top needleworkers in the young nation), and “Nellies Needlers” was born. This group of “little old ladies” raised more than a million dollars to preserve the house in less than 50 years. We run the largest and oldest judged needlework show in the country. More than 600 pieces (many mailed in from all over the country and even from overseas!) are submitted, categorized, judged by professionally certified judges, hung during February, and exhibited for March every year.
Last fall, I somehow, in a moment of complete madness, agreed to be co-chair for the 2026 show. So naturally, the NCR had the worst snowstorm in decades that shut us down during the first week of February, the “take-in” of the 600+ pieces and “sort into 40+ categories based on technique for judging “week. But we endured and pulled it off, doing in 2 (long) days what normally takes 4. The snow also affected the last week of the mammoth “Bake 5500 Martha Washington original recipe gingerbread cookies” (and if you’re a baker, you just about have to sign an NDA because it IS Martha’s original recipe), and the “set up the kitchen for the month-long cafe” we run.
In a month, we raise over ~ $80K, and that’s not counting the thousands in admissions fees that go directly to the house, and the money for the exhibitor’s fees. So-although I neither bake nor cook, I was a tad busy overseeing the 900+ volunteers that it takes to staff this over 3 months, and dealing with a myriad of “crises”…..generally along the lines of “why didn’t MY piece win a ribbon?” or the ever-popular “You didn’t hang my piece right-” or “it’s too high-no one can see it….” and other calamities that I personally-apparently- inflict on the entrants.
Obviously I (semi) jest—most of the couple of thousand folks that come really enjoy the show, whether they stitch or not. And then of course there’s the 2 weeks of take down, hand back, and clean -up- until next year's work. begins.
And now that it’s over-and I think I’m alive—and semi-caught up on life (took until early June), it’s back to the blog and the book. I will say in my defense, however, that I actually kept drafting “starts” to posts over the past several months. (56 total!) However, after writing a few pages, I’d turn on the TV, and voila! Everything was OBE (overtaken by events) ……..so I’d throw up my hands, and pick up a book. Doing “research,” you know.
And therefore, before I finish my other draft discussing the irony of the 5th Great Grandson of George III coming to lecture his onery “ex-subjects,” on the dangers of over-concentrated executive power…oh! the irony….
Allow me to rant about my last encounter with… the US Post Office.
Full confession: I’m notorious for mailing my Christmas cards somewhere between MLK Day and Valentine’s Day. It’s the result of years of teaching at institutions that don’t finish finals week until Dec. 15th-ish, and my talent for always having the teaching slot that inevitably has the last scheduled exams. In my defense, I did get cards out on time once, about 15 years ago -and everyone complained! They decided they liked the odd card arriving about the same time as their Visa bills, so as a public service, I’ve kept up the “Happy New Year” Christmas/Hanukkah cards tradition.
I will admit that this year the cards went out after Valentine’s Day - due to show prep-but I know that they were all in the mail by February 25th-because I mailed the last batch on my way to our opening reception for the exhibitors that night… So imagine my surprise over the last several weeks or so when I received several cards marked “return to sender” in my mail….with frank dates ranging from late April to early May! I mentioned this to my next door neighbor-and she told me she’d had a similar experience. She mailed her cards on December 12th-(and she’s sure because they left for their Christmas break on the 13th) and many of hers weren’t delivered until mid to late February.
I do know that some people received them in a “normal” amount of time, as I heard from them via DMs/FB in early March. And since posting a Facebook note on the situation, I’ve been hearing from folks when they get theirs-and the last one was June 5th!!… And another card was returned as undeliverable on June 9th! The important point: most were franked anywhere from mid- to late May, and several folks noted that their stamps weren’t even cancelled
I’ve since learned that the Post Office no longer is required to cancel every piece of mail on the day it was mailed. Add that to the fact that former Postmaster General Louis De Joy, a former executive with several private mail delivery companies in direct competition with the USPS, used his tenure to enact policies that deliberately slowed the delivery of first-class mail and decommissioned hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines, and there clearly is a problem.
But I can’t help but obsess about what this means for mail-in voting. Let me be clear-I’m a BIG fan of mail-in voting. It ensures that military members can fully participate in the democracy they are prepared to defend with their lives. It allows the elderly, shut-ins, nursing home residents, voters with disabilities, people who work weird shifts that don’t necessarily correspond to voting hours, or work multiple jobs, and folks who travel a lot, to vote. It ensures that folks living in rural areas that have to travel many miles to vote (i.e., Indian reservations, etc.) can participate without taking two days off from work.
Confession: under the “old” system, when you had to register in advance for permission to cast an absentee ballot or vote early, I missed voting in two major elections: the first when I was Director of Plans and Policy at the White House; the second while I was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In both instances, I had to make a sudden work-related trip on the Saturday or Sunday before the election, so I was out of luck.
Interestingly enough, I’ve been told by multiple campaign staffers that the profession with the worst voting turnout is….you guessed it: presidential and senate campaign staffers!. They’re so busy getting everyone else out to vote, they forget to register themselves, or are away from home on election day.
So when I moved to California and discovered that I could permanently register to vote by mail, I opted in. In most cases, I literally handed in the ballot on Election Day at my precinct or dropped it at the well-secured drop-box outside of City Hall, because I was in the area on the first Tuesday in November, but at least I was covered if not.
There’s also a significant issue with this lag, as it affects normal mail. There are still certain forms that cannot be e-signed/faxed, as they must have an original signature. And not everyone is online. Along with older folks, many don’t make enough money to afford a computer or pay for internet access. One need only walk into any public library that offers free computer time to see folks lined up to use them. And while that might be okay for searching for jobs online, I’m sure no one wants to enter PPI onto a “shared” computer.
These are the same folks who still write checks/get money orders to pay rent, utilities, assorted bills, etc. Imagine the late fees they will incur while trying to pay bills. I ran into something similar right after 9/11. Remember the anthrax attacks? Turns out the Post Office branch that processed those letters was the one nearest to where I lived in Alexandria at the time. The PO’s solution to the problem was to irradiate every piece of mail, so both incoming and outgoing mail were delayed 3-4 days. That was just enough to make my Bank of America Visa payments “late” by a day or two. And to add insult to injury, the balance due both times was less than the late fee. Needless to say, that card was cancelled. (For you young’uns, some of us here are old enough to remember when banks didn’t have branches in every state and no one had even imagined paying bills online.)
So I‘m watching with a very jaded eye as the administration is already setting the stage for another disputed election… the future isn’t looking pretty, folks.
The U.S. Postal Service recently issued proposed rules in response to a Trump executive order seeking to exert federal control over mail-in voting. The proposal would require states to turn over lists of registered voters who will receive mail ballots. The feds (who have NO constitutional role in running elections) will check that list against other lists of “US citizens” maintained by DHS, and then give a “corrected” list to the USPS. Of course, if there are any discrepancies between these multiple lists, there is so far no way to rectify it. If the states fail to turn over the lists, USPS will not deliver absentee ballots to those voters. And in Congressional testimony last week, the current Postmaster General indicated he would abide by the EO.
Clearly, if this rule takes effect, it would put states in an impossible position: either create and turn over mail-in voter registration lists to a federal administration that has proven itself to be hostile to the concept of the Rule of Law, or halt mail-in absentee voting altogether. Either way, the administration wins.
And guess what! In February, the Supreme Court ruled that citizens can’t sue the USPS even when employees deliberately refuse to deliver the mail! I think we’re toast.
Of course, that means there’ll never be a dearth of topics for us to write about. As the Chinese curse says, “May you live in interesting times…” But if anyone has any ideas on how to make life more boring, I’m all ears. DM me!