COVID Card #287

February 16, 2021 | 0 comments

Try as we may, Mother Nature will always win. It really would be best if we didn’t test her. Failing to pay attention to how close your very old, very large tree is to power lines, for instance, is probably not wise. If MN wants those lines to go down, they’re going down, regardless, but trimming that tree would make it more of a challenge. Thus learned (I do so dearly hope) a few people a little more than a block away from my house when early yesterday morning, parts of their trees succumbed to nature and nose (limb?) dived smack onto a power line.

Our power company reports over 8,000 power lines down in the Portland metro area with over 3,000 people working to fix them.

As if to say, “Hey, PGE, you aren’t the only utility that deserves a snow day,” the internet at my partner’s studio (he did not lose power) also went out yesterday. And so here we are with a few firsts:

  • first COVID card inspired not by research, but by a memory
  • first COVID card finished by portable light
  • first COVID card that almost didn’t get posted the day after it was made (does close really only count in horseshoes and hand grenades?)

Here’s the story…(there is no lovely lady, that’s a different story)… As you know (even if you don’t remember) if you’ve followed these cards from the beginning (or you know me well enough), my dad was a letter carrier. If you were old enough to form memories in the 1980s, you might remember that some companies used to send free samples to everyone on postal routes. The most common free samples were breakfast cereal, bar soap, shampoo/conditioner, and laundry detergent. Companies would send cases of this stuff to post offices for delivery. They always sent way too much and, by law, anything left after all customers received a sample had to be thrown away.

At the risk of revealing my father’s high crimes, I tell you here that my dad thought that was bulls*@t. He found it reprehensible that perfectly good products should be trashed. So, he, um, requisitioned them.

Today’s COVID card pays homage to the free product samples we all used to get in the mail (without even having to blog about them), to one of the absurd aspects of capitalism, and to bending the law a little, tiny bit. Yeah, yeah, I know: Lock her up! Dad’s dead. Were he able to, he might say, “As soon as you’ve learned how to resurrect my body from ashes and stick my soul back in it, come right on over and arrest me.”

Cards 1-100

To learn more about any of the first 100 cards, select a number from the list below.

COVID Cards

The United States Postal Service has been hit hard by the pandemic. Controlling elements of the Federal Government (the president and Republican Senate) do not want to provide aid to the service. So, it’s up to us. It may seem insignificant, but if we all sent just a few letters a week, we could help ensure that our daily, free mail delivery service continues. For the past (see the card number above) days, I have drawn a card each day and mailed it to someone the next day (none are sent on Sundays; two are sent on Mondays). Please consider mailing cards and letters while we still can for 55 cents (first class letter postage). If the USPS fails, you could find it costs $8 or more to send a letter. And that’s just one of the ways we will all lose if the USPS shuts down.

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