Dear Mr. President

       More Letters From Paradise
          Dear Mr. President
The President of the United States receives a ton of letters each day. It all began when Washington received just five letters a day, and he answered them all. And as time went on, later Presidents began to receive more and more letters. When McKinley became President he was being sent one hundred letters a day. It was just too much. And so the mailroom was born.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to Americans on his radio "Fireside Chats" during the Great Depression. He urged people to write to him with their troubles. A half-million letters arrived the first week after his talk. The White House mail room became a fire hazard.

The Office of Presidential Correspondence called "O.P.C." by those who work there.
It consists of 50 staff members,36 interns and a rotating roster of 300 volunteers to keep up with about 10,000 letters and messages every day.

In the White House mailroom 10 young well-dressed young men and women interns would reach into the pile of letters and begin to read. Choosing which letters made it to President Obama. When President Obama came into office he wanted to read his mail. He said he would like to read 10 letters a day. These final 10 letters were put in a purple folder and added to the back of the briefing book he took with him to the residence on the second floor of the White House each night. He liked to read them after dinner. "Back from the OVAL" was what the stamp said on the letters Obama had read. They were returned in batches to O.P.C., and most had some kind of notation in the margins. Some letters he stewed over. Some letters he answered with his own hand.

Nixon refused to read anything bad said about him. Reagan answered dozens of letters on weekends. He enjoyed reading letters from kids. Clinton wanted to see a representative stack every few weeks. George W. Bush liked to get a pile of 10 already-answered letters on occasion.The question now is, what will President Trump do about the White House mail?
I am deeply in debt to Jeanne Marie Laskas  for her wonderful article "The Mailroom," in the New York times Magazine, January 22,2017

      Aloha
      Grant

Circus Era Ends

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              Circus Era Ends
This Spring will see the end of an era, with the closing of Ringling Brothers Circus. For 146 years, millions of Americans thrilled to the events of this circus, but times change and people's tastes change. In its heyday wire walkers, elephants, trapeze artists, were unique forms of entertainment. But not so today. Also, there are critics of animal treatment and housing.

The closing of the circus will put five hundred people out of work, and will require housing for them. Also, homes have to be found for all the animals. There is already a retirement home in Florida for the elephants. But what about the railroad cars that used to occupy over a mile of track? Homes on wheels, animal pens, not to mention foodstuffs for both people and animals. Maybe some European circus will buy these specialized cars.

I remember going to the Ringling Brothers
Circus when I was a kid living in Texas. The huge tent with something going on in  each of the three rings at the same time.It's a good memory.

There also were small carnivals to be found in the 1950's. One was located outside of my town for a week. Kids rushed to help unroll the heavy canvas tent and do other jobs in hopes of getting a free ticket. The carnival boss  also employed a few high school kids to work ticket booths. My job was at the ride called the "Loop a Plane." It consisted of a tall tower with an arm and a cab at each end,that would whirl the riders around  vertical at high speed. When there were no customers, a search of the area under the ride would often turn up a number of coins lost by riders.

One of the carnival workers used to hide his whiskey bottle in my booth, and he warned me to watch out for "spotters," men who would tell the boss. He taught me a couple of tricks.  First, when the customer, handed him his ticket he would make like he was tearing the ticket up and then return it to me to be resold. I don't remember if I participated in this activity or not. But I don't think I did. One other thing I learned was to slide the customer's change just slightly back under the booth's thick wood window which blocked the customer"s view of some coins.

Many years ago I read in a part of a book by John Steinbeck, in which  the character is also taught the same tricks I was taught. l

The era of the Ringling Brothers Circus is now history, and has been replaced by many small carnivals which travel across America. We have these carnivals even here in Hawaii.
    Aloha
    Grant

   

Packers

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              Packers
I never played football in school, because of a heart condition. But, I always was at   every game. Later, at the University of Michigan, there were some great football games. And now living here in Hawaii, due to the time difference,we can watch games at breakfast, and have the rest of the day to do other things. But, don't get me wrong,we watch only important games. I am not a fanatic, and neither is my wife. This brings me to some football fanatics, the Green Bay Packers.

If you are a football fanatic, you may want to skip all the following information about the Green Bay Packers. You probably know about all this anyway. But for people who are only mildly interested in football, you will find this information very interesting.

The Packers were founded in 1919. Curly Lambeau, an outstanding player for Notre Dame, and George W. Calhoun, the sports editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, decided to form a football team. Lambda worked as a shipping clerk at the Indian Packing Company-hence the name of the new team. The Packers won ten games that first year. But it was difficult to find funds to keep the team solvent. In the end, aid came from stock sales, the first stock sale came in 1923. Shares were sold for $5.00 each, and required shareholders to buy six season tickets in order to see the bleachers filled.

Today the Packers are the only professional sports team in the United States that is owned by shareholders-363,948 of them representing 5,020,523 shares. I met a woman who was able to buy a single share for her husband's Christmas gift. It cost $250.  There are no dividends for shares, only bragging rights and a framed certificate proving that he is one of the team's 363,948 owners.

The only way to get tickets to a game at Lambeau Field is to inherit them. Tickets could not be transferred to anybody outside the ticket holder's immediate family. Nowadays, however, you can put your name on a waiting list-which currently numbers more than 81,000. The wait to get tickets is estimated to be around thirty years. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote that the wait would be more like 955 years. Some couples, on having a baby, put the child's name on the list.

A couple of other facts about the Packers. When  a Packer scores a touchdown, it is expected that he will jump into the stands.  In this way, the leap is a symbolic embrace of the team with the crowd. Also, the Packer fans travel, and are to be found everywhere. We have them here in Honolulu at Snapper's bar, which is always filled to over-flowing for a Packer game.

All of the information for this brief story of the Packers came from a most wonderful essay by Austin Smith, in Harper's magazine.

     Aloha
     Grant

Scooter People

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            Scooter People

The Nevada desert on a December night was very cold, and silent. But here and there one could see small groups of people making their way to the blazing lights of a casino. The same way moths seek the light of a candle. Some arrive from nearby Arizona and California, where gambling is illegal.
Were they coming to the casino because they were tired of watching t.v., reading, or knitting? Or more likely,the promise of riches. We may never know for sure, but I suspect the latter motive.

Inside the casino I found something very disturbing. There were a number of very heavy people making their way through the crowds of people on their scooters. They seemed to me, to be somehow out of place. I feel sorry for anyone who has lost the movement of their legs, and are confined to a wheelchair. But, why should their disability prevent them from having some entertainment?

Their scooters made it so that they could reach and operate slot machines. I thought  that crap tables, black jack, and  other games of chance were out of their reach.

However,sometime later my pity for those heavy people, bound to their scooters evaporated. I saw a row of scooters parked outside a lounge, while their owners were inside stuffing their faces with free food and drink. I turned away in disgust. These scooter people were not as infirm as they pretended to be. But, I may be wrong, who knows?

     Aloha
     Grant