The U.S. Postal Service Is a Wondrous Creation

Jeffrey M. Bowen

 I have a special interest in the U.S. Postal Service for reasons that are both historical and uniquely personal.

 My grandfather, Henry Bowen, served as postmaster for the Chebeague Island, Maine post office from 1899 to 1935. His position on a comparatively isolated island provides a perspective on the life and times of rural post offices everywhere. Those decades also tell a story about the unique ways my Maine relatives combined mail with resourceful marketing.

My Gramp Bowen shared illustrious historical company. The postal service dates from early colonial days. George Washington firmly believed that the new nation needed the glue of a post office to cement it together. Benjamin Franklin became the country’s first postmaster.  

 Nowadays the scale of the USPS is impressive. Historian Devin Leonard tells us that this “wondrous American creation” uses 300,000 mail carriers to deliver the 513 million pieces of mail which is mandated for delivery six days a week.  This is 40 percent of the world’s total volume. The extent of deliveries dwarfs UPS and FedEx. If the USPS did not exist, we would have to invent something very much like it.

Henry Bowen had to be aware of this when he quit repairing lighthouses in 1898, came ashore for good, and built a post office and store in the middle of the island.

 Around the 25-square miles of Chebeague with its 15 miles of roads, Henry set up five mailboxes near the two hotels and seven boarding houses. Each day he bicycled to pick up correspondence for transfer to the mainland by ferry. As they say, neither snow nor rain slowed him. Like his rural counterparts across the country, Henry also maintained a store within the post office where he sold postcards, clothing, candy, some hardware, patent medicines, films, and fir pillows.

 The post office was fourth class, which meant Henry earned his only official compensation of $250 annually from small commissions on stamps. There were no government pensions until 1940. President Theodore Roosevelt made rural free delivery (RFD) permanent in 1902. This made the island’s mail delivery a family affair. Henry’s son Archie made a career from delivering the daily mail. At times my grandmother did the chores with a mare and buggy, accompanied by a 12-year-old who became my father.

An intriguing aspect of my grandfather’s service was postcards.  In the post office he maintained a library of some 40,000 of them.  Many were provided by Portland photographers contracted to Henry. Sold to boarders and visitors to the island, the cards could be stamped and mailed from the same site. Reportedly, on just one day in 1906, the island post office set a record by processing 1,734 post cards, notably because there were no more than 1,000 summer residents. Today these postcard souvenirs are a hot collectors’ item.

Most likely Henry also figured that stamps would become increasingly valuable.  Commemorative issues were becoming popular in the early 1900’s, and they are much more so today.  Now there are more than five million stamp collectors in the U.S. alone. President Franklin D. Roosevelt still ranks as one of the nation’s most passionate and involved so-called philatelists.

 Back in the early 1950’s, my dad bought me cancelled stamps and I pasted them faithfully in an album that still provides a colorful window on the world. Although his face will never appear on a stamp, and I have only photos of his profitable postcards, my grandfather will forever remain an affectionate feature of my personal history and our national heritage.   

Childhood Past and Present

 

Childhood Past and Present

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

Is childhood a developmental stage in life, or a social or cultural construct, a biological or psychological phenomenon, or mostly a bunch of conflicting ideas about the impacts of economics, laws, and learning environments?  All of these categories influence our thinking, and the facets change over time, making it hard to pin down lasting conclusions.  

Childhood usually refers to the time after infancy (one or two years old) and before we turn 13 and become teenagers.   Adulthood is legally reached at age 18.  In between is a transitional stage called adolescence, beginning with the onset of puberty.

 We pay special attention to institutional boundaries for childhood, yet those lines often blur given individual physical and psychological changes, and most definitely in context with our personal memories of childhood.  

 As a father, a professional educator, and amateur historian, I have spent years trying to figure out childhood. Comparisons usually help, so I was intrigued by a recent scholarly blog that posed the question: Is childhood today essentially different from childhood in 1890?

 More than a century ago, waves of immigration rivaled the ethnic diversity we experience today. Ethnic variations among children were overridden by the priority of educating for basic literacy. Economic stress and larger families meant that children were expected to take on either employment or home tasks to support their families. Especially in urban factories, harsh conditions for child labor often prevailed. Religious beliefs reinforced the assumption that children were ignorant and in need of direct adult instruction. Strict behavioral rules and physical punishments were the norm at home and school.

 Do the changes that have occurred in our conceptions of childhood over the last 130 years make the life of a child essentially different?  Biologically, children are much the same.  However, our societal views of childhood have changed dramatically.

 No longer are children considered lynchpins of employability.  Yet they wield powerful purchasing power, and so do parents on their behalf.  But their contributions are more about what they spend, not what they earn. The systems that protect or nurture children have proliferated and diversified -- medically, legally, educationally, socially, and technologically, to name just a few of the categories.  We have truly complexified childhood by dividing it into more and more developmental stages. 

Among the bigger influences on children in the last two centuries has been change in the family structure.  As divorces and single parenting have transformed living and working arrangements, the conditions for childhood have been redefined psychologically and socially.  The time and opportunity for children to use screen time and electronically access data and information has invited children into the world of adulthood sooner than ever before.  Small wonder that children feel more like adults.  They embrace ideas and opinions once-upon-a-time reserved or hidden from them.  At the same time, the continuity of youthful learning from the internet can be confusing and superficial.  

School-going has maintained many logistical features that would have been found in classrooms of the 1890s.  School attendance is still compulsory through age 16. Yet changes are revealing.  Children now experience education in ways that prolong their studies, diversify their academic subject matter and engagement, and recognize or reward them differently.  For instance, standardized testing was virtually unknown at the end of the 19^th century.  Immigration has stimulated intercultural exposure for children, and so too has the availability of shared technology and the convenience of travel.  The legal protection and guarantees provided to children who have handicapping conditions has been transformational, particularly in the U.S. Our educational systems have created categories of diagnosis and treatment that were virtually unknown even 50 years ago.

 Events of the last few decades have focused intently on the social and emotional wellbeing of children.  The recent pandemic has rearranged more than the physical accommodations for children at home or in school.  It has intensified concerns about the way they feel about themselves and how they connect with others, including parents, teachers, and peers.  At the extremes we encounter disastrous dysfunctions that may wreak havoc on the lives of school attendees.  This includes self-destructive tendencies, including use of drugs and widespread medical interventions.

Here in the 21st century we are struggling with a difficult combination of contradictions regarding childhood.  We want children to develop a work ethic, and to have authentic hands-on employment experiences, to be motivated and informed about the career and technical world they will soon enter. Yet we find it difficult to give them meaningful opportunities to engage in the world of work and careers; entry is typically superficial or at least confusingly divided between vocational and academic opportunities.

We want children to become knowledgeable about the world around them, so we try to make their formal learning systematic, staged, and age appropriate. Unfortunately, commercial advertising and internet providers thwart our purpose. Availability of shockingly explicit and misleading information is difficult for adults, including parents and teachers to control more than minimally. We don’t want children to mature so fast, but they do anyway, unevenly given our demographic diversity as a nation, among our states, and based on dramatic disparities in wealth.

Still and all, on many fronts we have experienced outstanding progress toward improving the experiences of childhood. Our rates of infant and child mortality have declined steeply. We are better than ever before at controlling and diminishing childhood disease. We provide extensive protections and opportunities for children with disabilities and chronic disease.

In ways that sometimes surprise us, many children resist parts of growing up, or maturing into self-responsibility.  Consider the sizable proportion of children who want the convenience and assurance of continuing to live at home.  There is something deeply stressful and economically prohibitive about the whole experience of maturing to adulthood, but many children and their parents genuinely want to preserve their innocence and let them remain child-like as long as possible.  The hard knocks of childhood in the 1890s are largely gone, but we have substituted calibrated insulation and legal entitlements that may undermine or delay preparing for adult life. 

When the conveniences and living conditions of today are compared with the 1890s, there is no doubt that childhood is nowadays a time of great enjoyment and fun, with plenty of free time and widely available means to explore and discover.

 Of course, the prevalence of poverty and unevenness of adult guidance stands in the way of such enjoyment. Risk and issues of safety are sometimes threatening. Simply coping with the challenges of procedurally complex bureaucracy can make getting things done very frustrating.

 However, increasingly we are recognizing the importance of adult guidance via neighborhoods, school outreach, community links, and mentoring.  We also have gained a greater appreciation of ways to enable children to experience learning through real or authentic projects that can produce lasting results.  Children learn best when they discover, invent, engage their curiosity, and feel they play a meaningful role to helping others and themselves. Therein lies our hope for the children of this century and the next.          

 

                                                 Cathance River by Jeffrey Bowen

Let me walk you down to the murmuring brook

That seasons will turn into a river.

I will put my arm around the shoulders of your soul, 

And together we can sense the wonder around us.

As we listen to the sounds of peace, 

We will share a dream world where 

Colors paint the water green and iron orange.

Far beyond the distant sound of highways, 

Way below the lazy props of planes, 

We will step on sleeping leaves

In the dappling sunlight, 

And breathe the air left sweet

By the lingering smell of moss. 

Together we will climb the banks

And disappear into the woods.

(July 2022, Topham, Maine)  

 

 Can You Live with Your Choices?

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 Most of us have definite preferences about what we want for breakfast. But when abundant choices are placed in front of us, indecision may reign. This happened to me recently at the omelet counter of a resort buffet. The masked chef stood before an impressive array of small metal bowls that were loaded with shredded bacon, both hot and sweet peppers, mushrooms, spinach, ham, onions, and several different cheeses. I thought I heard a muffled question, “What would you like?”  I just stood there stupidly, plate in hand, as the chef expertly cracked two eggs into an oiled fry pan and looked at me for answer. Stressed by the growing line of plate holders behind me, I defaulted to my familiar “bacon and cheese”.     

I got my usual ingredients, but as I watched others place their orders the next morning, I hatched a few theories. 

I wondered why so many immediately lined up at the omelet counter without stopping to look over the prepared choices sitting nearby. Some just ordered eggs, and then had choices of fried, scrambled, or poached, over easy or hard, on the spot. Customized choices made people feel special. People love preferences.

 I concluded that too many choices can produce confusion.  Research shows that people like the idea of having many choices available. Yet the act of choosing may prove frustrating.  When choices are limited at the start, we may be unhappy initially, but after choice is made, we become happier with our decision than when we make the very same choice from the bigger menu.  House or car purchases in a buyers’ market suggest a similar disappointment.  A surfeit of choices spawns “buyers’ remorse.”

Yet another possibility comes from my having turned promptly to familiar bacon and cheese.  When confronted by the time constraint of a quick decision, we tend to go with what we know best, and what we know will taste good.

The term for this phenomenon is “satisficing”.  Given certain circumstances -- like a line of plate holders standing behind you -- making the right or ideal choice becomes less important and less stressful than making a choice that seems good enough at the time.  This is like an archer’s decision when first he shoots an arrow, and then he paints a target around it.

Many avoid making a choice at all.  In an election we call this an abstention.  Among many reasons for stubbornly refusing to choose is disliking all the ingredients (candidates?) or protesting them, or just being indecisive.    

My career experience in education suggests another way to avoid or delay making a choice.  Sometimes it is strategically useful to call for lots more research before deciding.  As one of Parkinson’s laws suggests, “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.”   

There is still another possibility for coping with the omelet line.   What if my wife had been standing beside me? I could have asked, “What choice do you recommend?”  She might have said, “This is what I know you like!”  In culinary matters, often she knows me better than myself.  The point is, when a choice must be made, welcome reliable advice from others we trust.   Undoubtedly, this is one of the best ways to find an excellent restaurant.

Every one of our choices, big ones like what career to pursue, or smaller ones like  when to get out of bed in the morning, is constrained by a context.  We do not pay enough attention to the factors that influence our choices.  This can be crucial when we are expected to make choices for others. Do we stop to ask what prejudices we are bringing to that person’s table?

Our predispositions can be influenced by our culture, personality, our sense of self-control, or simply the way a choice makes us feel.     I am not sure where omelets fit on my emotional scale, but I do know that choices can be anything but economically rational.  I had already paid for my eggs.  

 In his classic book, Future Shock, published 50 years ago, Alvin Toffler pointed to “overchoice” as a villain. Technology and the internet certainly produce information overload.  The act of making choices can produce mental fatigue. 

There are some ways to make the demands of choice less taxing.  Not all of them work at once, but it can be helpful to figure out ways to reduce our options at the start.  Know the consequences of each choice by making them as specific as possible.  Put choices into simplified categories you can manage.  Set a deadline to avoid proliferating choices and unnecessary delays.  

At times choices seem like separate threads.  However, they interweave and become the fabric of our lives.  Choices become not just what we wear, but who we are.  When you make a choice, the best question is not whether it is the right decision, but whether you want to live with it.  

 

  Educational Strategies Can Help Us Overcome Pandemic Disruptions

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 Virtually every aspect of formal public education has been catastrophically affected by the pandemic over the last two years   The Covid variant Omicron continues to generate massive logistical and educational complications for schools traditionally accustomed to bureaucratic stability.

 What worries us is being forced into a reactive posture as we respond to competing or confusing health linked policies imposed by different governmental authorities.  It is hard to anticipate and reverse the scale of educational damage that will play out over the lifetimes of our youth.

 Most schools have persisted in remaining open despite temporary setbacks over the last few weeks.  Most have implemented virus testing procedures that allow children to stay in school despite exposure unless they show symptoms or test positive for the virus.  This is definitely helpful!  

  But what about sharpening our focus on educational program initiatives that could help us preserve or improve the quality of learning and instruction?  Prospects for enhanced state and federal aid are promising.  Here are five proven strategies we can build on right away.         

 First, revise local and regional curriculum to create more project-based learning opportunities designed to extend across school vacations and into next summer.   Such learning can be coordinated between classroom teachers and external sponsors and evaluators.  Continuity of progress can be achieved with applications of technology and use of widely available performance rubrics.

 Second, begin planning now for alternative assessments that will depend less on state proficiency testing and more from flexible portfolios that demonstrate multi-disciplinary criteria.  Highly successful portfolio models can be found in the Erie I BOCES College and Career program or in the thirty-year-old work of the downstate area State Performance Standards Consortium.

  One way or another, the time is ripe to blend separate academic disciplines and base progress on formative narrative feedback.  Teachers must recognize the need to slow down, streamline lessons, and focus more on critical thinking. 

 Third, since about 90 percent of all schools have provided laptops or other devices to students who need them, with wi-fi widely available, accelerate the use of instructional technology that encourages independent or individual learning, reinforced or enriched by teacher-guided instruction.

Fourth, engage parents in optional on-site or technology-based sessions to help them discuss and understand curricular issues, in particular the ones most vulnerable to misunderstanding.   The key is to involve students as presenters and explainers.

 Finally, renew and extend events, celebrations, slogans and symbols that will draw school community members together in support of collective social and emotional wellbeing.  Mental health counseling and referrals are essential, but we also need activity that nurtures an inclusive team spirit.

 At a time when so many children have confronted disruptions in their educational experience, and traumas associated with trying to balance strange home-school linkages, now more than ever the schools should place priority on visibly and vocally demonstrating unity and shared concern.

 

Cowboys Taught Me A Lasting Lesson

 

Cowboys Taught Me A Lasting Lesson

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

For children of the 1950s, as for many earlier generations, cowboys were heroes.  My boyhood memories overflow with television characters who included Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger, Davy Crockett (king of the wild frontier), Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke, and even horses and dogs like Trigger, Silver and Rin Tin Tin.  

 

Despite grainy black and white screens, these icons loomed large in my imagination and throughout the neighborhood. Play props included Stetson hats, spurs, boots, cap guns, bows and arrows, and rubber knives. We built forts with Lincoln Logs and maneuvered plastic figures around on horses, in covered wagons and stage coaches.  The cavalry always arrived to dispatch cattle rustlers, bank robbers, and war parties.  

 

My favorite was the buckskin-clad Range Rider.  My neighbors took their son and me to Boston to watch his tv persona stage rodeo events and even a bar fight.  By the late 1950s, the western genre had become immensely popular.  There were 26 different shows.  Bonanza was the first one to be filmed in color.  It reached 480 million viewers in 97 countries.  

 

Bonanza is the apt term to describe the western’s durability as an economic, cultural, stylistic, and musical treasure.  From John Ford’s classic movie Stagecoach (1939), to the droll personality of Will Rogers; and from the Dallas Cowboys football team to thousands of country and western tunes: the cowboy is quintessential Americana.   

 

 Why are cowboys so appealing?  Their powerful character: apparent independence, self-reliance, and rugged individualism enhanced by reputations for hard work and horsemanship.

 

The cowboys I admired also had style.  As a boy I wanted to dress like them.  In grade school, to mimic Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett, I wore a coonskin cap, glorified the Alamo, and longed for a Bowie knife.  As an adolescent, I dreamed of shooting rattlers at a dude ranch and wheeling around on a horse as my Stetson hat flew off.  Annette Funicello and her girlfriends sat on the corral fence and cheered me on.

 

Ironically, in 1954 a cowboy who would later save my life first appeared.  Soon his colorful magazine photos made him known as the Marlboro Man.  You could see he was the epitome of chiseled sunburned masculinity with a bandana around his neck and a lasso hanging from his saddle.  Ads showed him lighting cigarettes in full-page spreads for the next 50 years.

 

Philip Morris Tobacco Company discovered the charismatic appeal of this commercial cowboy when I was just a kid.  In what is said to be “one of the most brilliant ad campaigns of all time”, the Marlboro Man transformed smoking filtered cigarettes, which were originally thought to be feminine, into a macho invitation for us to “Come to Where the Flavor Is. Come to Marlboro Country.  Filter, Flavor, Flip Top Box.”

 

Back in the late 50’s, we seldom thought of tobacco as addictive.  Nor did we connect it with lung cancer and heart disease despite accumulating scientific evidence. In high school I took up pipe smoking.  Later on in the military, I added the corps’ traditional reward of inhalable cigarettes.

 

One evening in 1982 I happened to see a so-called “bootleg” documentary on PBS.  Titled “Death in the West”, and based on research originally funded by the tobacco industry, the film vividly documented the sad fate of my cowboy heroes.  Wheezing from COPD and emphysema, and hooked to oxygen tanks, these shrunken bronco busters were obviously dying.

 

Right then and there, I stopped smoking.  If I had not, I would probably be dead.  Imprinted as they are in my childhood, the legendary culture and stories of the cowboy will always impress me. But with an ironically twisted thanks to the Marlboro Man, I am still around to enjoy them.