We<\/p>\n
got around to paying the January bills today. Paying the monthly bills
\n is always a chore we put off as long as possible, enjoying a few days
\n of healthy
\n bank balance
\n before nagging fiscal responsibility forces us to get out the checkbook
\n and attack the pile of bad news accumulating alongside our computer.<\/p>\n
Finally, around noon, having stoically survived the psycho-fiscal damage
\n of writing all those checks, we discovered we were out of stamps. Looking
\n out
\n the window at the local manifestations of the wicked winter storm which
\n has wound it way across the nation this past week, and was at that
\n moment wracking New England in a particularly nasty meteorological
\n mishmash
\n which
\n managed
\n to intermingle the worst attributes of wind, rain, snow, hail and sleet,
\n we thanked the postal gods for placing a local Post Office on the corner
\n of our street, right across from the Armenian bakery.<\/p>\n
That lasted until Norma Yvonne informed us that the local Watertown
\n branches of the Post Office didn’t even open on Saturday, and that we
\n would have
\n to hike or drive the long mile into Harvard Square, where the PO was
\n open until 3. Which we did, finding a parking space right in front,
\n barely long enough for the White Whale. But we thought we could fit,
\n and our expertise in parallel parking is legendary, at least in our
\n own mind.<\/p>\n
Once in the post office,we were faced with another difficult decision. Which So we decided to get 20 stamps of each design, and to use some on correspondence We got around to paying the January bills today. Paying the monthly bills is always a chore we put off as long as possible, enjoying a few days of healthy bank balance before nagging fiscal responsibility forces us to get … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/johnwayne.jpg\")
<\/em>We embarked on what quickly became a fiendishly complicated full-contact
\n parking drill, with a pumped up degree of difficulty due to the ruts
\n of semi-solid slush and snowplow runoff. After several dozen minute forward
\n and backward maneuvers we managed to box ourselves completely in, literally
\n touching the bumpers of both the car in front and the car behind, and
\n half sticking out into Mt. Auburn Street at least two feet from the
\n curb at the closest point. After a short but intense inner struggle,
\n (for we hate to abandon any effort once we have undertaken it) we
\n decided our position was untenable and we had better disappear before
\n the owner
\n of one or the other of the contiguous cars arrived to comment on and
\n possibly object to our parking methodology. After an equally painstaking
\n disengagement we found a much more amenable spot a block down the street.<\/p>\n
\n design to buy? We found the holiday trio, Merry Christmas (featuring
\n Virgin and Child), Happy Hanukah and Kwanza a bit passe. The only
\n sports stamps available were "The Early Years of Football",
\n when men were men, offensive linemen weighed 180 pounds and wore leather
\n caps like WWI fighter pilots, and the Special Olympics. The first seemed
\n too nostalgically macho, and the
\n second
\n too
\n PC. There were musical honorees we knew next to nothing about, like Earl
\n Scruggs,
\n who we think used to be on Hee Haw, and Moss Hart, who we assume was
\n the father of the famous drummer of the Crateful Dead, Micky Hart. The
\n disease stamps are always tempting, but we felt only a tenuous connection
\n to the only
\n two
\n diseases available this month, Breast Cancer and Sickle Cell Anemia.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/rbfuller.jpg\")
So the
\n choice came down to two American icons; John Wayne and Buckminster Fuller.
\n We never really managed to embrace Wayne as a personal hero, he was always
\n too smug and obsequious, especially around the "little ladies". But
\n his rugged reticence has inspired several generations of American cowboys
\n and can be seen as the intellectual author of the entire Reagan revolution
\n and Bush’s Showdown in Arabia. On the other hand, Buckminster Fuller,
\n inventor of geodesic domes and prefabricated homes planted in place
\n by helicopters which had previous dropped tailored explosive charges
\n to clear a solid base for the future homesite, has been an inspiration
\n to the Dowbrigade since he was a wee lad. In fact, we has a bit TOO much
\n of a personal favorite to slap his face on a bunch of bills, which was
\n all we were mailing this morning.<\/p>\n
\n to correspondents on our naughty list and the others on correspondents
\n on our nice list. We’ll let you guess whose mug went out on our pile
\n of bills.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"