Puffs

I have almost always supported the United State Postal Service. They have a hard job to do, and for the most part have always done it well.

However . . . I may be changing my mind on this subject. A number of ‘happenings’ have been occurring recently that I just don’t understand.

A few examples:

• A commercial business in Red Cloud recently mailed out their month’s end statements and were hoping their customers would shortly be mailing back a check to pay for their purchases. After waiting a while, no money was coming in and a few questions were asked. It seemed all of the statement mailings never got to the customers, and no reasons were given by the Post Office as to why.

• On a personal note: we usually charge our automobile gas purchases and pay at the end of each month. Well, a couple of months ago, our new statement came showing no payment for the previous month. Upon calling to see if they really did not receive our check, we were told they just received it the day after they sent out the new billings. It took a month for that check to go from our home to the business not more than two blocks away.

•  Then, I read in the Hastings newspaper of the schools and county governmental agencies that wanted to hold a meeting with the citizens in their area about tax issues. Seems not a lot of people attended as were expected. In checking with a number of people it seems many people did not receive the notices that were mailed out, or they received them after the meeting date.

• The editor of the Superior newspaper was recently informed by the Post Office he had to change the addresses of all his newspapers that went just a few miles south of Superior, but didn’t have a new address and zip code for him to use.

Over the years I’ve heard of occasional instances of mail being lost or misplaced, but in the last few years the instances seem to be more common. I can’t suggest things are going from bad to worse, but I really wonder what is causing a sudden increase in mail being lost or delayed.

My favorite suggestion or evaluation of the situations is this:

• A few years back the Post Office spent a ton of money on machines that could sort mail at an amazing pace and was supposed to enable the Postal Service to deliver mail faster and with more accuracy.

• Before these machines were used if a person mailed a letter to someone else in the same town, all the Post Office had to do was cancel the postage and put the letter in the addressee’s mail box. Short and sweet.

• Since the new machines started working, they seemed to do a good job of sorting mail and getting it on its way. However, the managers of the facility found the machine had enough down time, they were looking for to do. As such, every little Post Office around it was told they had to forward all their mail to the central location for the machine to sort the mail and then continue it on its way.

• What this meant was that the letter I mailed to a business two blocks away had to travel close to 200 miles to Omaha, be sorted and returned back to my town (in our case, that trip took a month).

• The final nail in the coffin for me was a week or so ago, I had to be gone all day and upon coming home I stopped to pick up the mail and the Post Office door was locked. Now, I know I don’t remember everything, but that was the first time . . . ever . . . I ever found the Post Office door being locked. I later found out the reason the door was locked was that the inside window lock was broken and the local Post Master was having trouble getting the Post Office maintenance people down to repair the broken lock.

• Consider all those people who go to work early in the morning and can’t get their mail before noon. The Post Office is locked when they get back home and their mail is never picked up.

The Post Office was originally set up to be a “Socialistic” organization, and that made sense. However, maybe it is time to rethink the problem of getting our mail from one place to another.

A O

I have not heard much about Planned Parenthood lately. I still have to laugh when I see that name as Planned Parenthood does everything it can to make sure a person does not become a parent by pushing its abortion efforts.

Do you remember about six years ago when it was discovered PP was selling human parts it recovered from its abortion efforts. I think this information made public cost them support and money. As such, PP thought they were the object of wrong efforts and took the people to court who found and released the information to the public. PP won the court battle, but the question is still in the Supreme Court being studied.

Please pray that PP is called to justice in defense of all those children that were killed inside their offices.

A O

Puffs

Prognostication . . .

Prediction of future events is always a risky event. Just ask all those people who bet on football games and horse races.

I bring this up because of the current weather conditions and the amount of rain received so far this year. This past week or so, much, but not all, of the area received some nice rains. They came slow enough that very little, if any, ran off into creeks, ponds or did any soil erosion.

I got to wondering just what the rainfall predictions were for southcentral Nebraska at the beginning of the year. I looked, but with my limited resources, I didn’t find any guesses. However, I did check with the Little Blue NRD to see just how much we have received for the year to date.

Now, for most of the year, most residents of the area realized that 2023 was going to go down into the record book as a year of drought.

Will the record agree with that prediction?

The answer may depend on where you live and for farmers, how you managed your crops.

Keep in mind that the average rainfall for the Little Blue area ranges from 22 to 24 inches, less in the west and higher in the east.

The NRD rainfall records surprised me somewhat. A few of the rainfall totals were:

Diller: 2023 to date: 23.1 inches. The highest in the NRD, but on the eastern edge of the district.

Lawrence: 2023 to date: 20.6 inches. Third highest in the district. However, southeast of Lawrence a report was only 10.4 inches. This report came with only 20 reports for the year, however, while the Lawrence report had 267 reports.

Blue Hill had reports of 19.6 inches 2.2 mile NE of town; 16.1 inches in Blue Hill; 15.7 inches 4 miles east and 12.3 inches 6 miles northeast of Blue Hill.

Nora: 17 inches north of town.

Superior: 16.8 inches 6 miles northeast; 16 inches just northwest of town.

Nelson: 15 inches in town.

Oak: 14.5 inches in town and 10.6 inches 3 miles northwest of town.

Reports vary a lot, and they are all correct. Rainfall does not fall evenly across an area.

A “drought” forecast may not have been in the works a year ago for 2023 as the other factor in a drought forecast has to be just how hot is the summer going to be. 2023, in August, gave much of the NRD eleven days of no rain along with 100 plus degree days. That combination pretty well did in the dryland corn and soybean crops.

I’ve heard production reports from 2 bushels per acre to maybe 8 bushels per acre.

That would qualify as a drought report.

However, I’ve heard reports of dryland corn that would maybe make 60 to 80 bushels per acre. That corn was planted on wheat ground which helped conserve moisture greatly.

If, and that’s a big ‘If’ we get any more moisture before the year is over, future historians will wonder why the year’s crop production records are so low, considering the amount of rains that did come to certain areas.

The future . . . it’s hard to predict.

A O

As long as I’m talking about the weather, I’m going to include a couple of items more than 100 years old.

Last weekend I got out my old copy of the booklet “Hoppers To Copters”, stories of the first 100 years of Nuckolls County. One small section was titled: ‘Thoughts of the Pioneers.’

Noted in the book: “The early day pioneer farmer had to be something of a philosopher to learn to take the bad years and cooperate with Nature to gain a little in the good years. When he had crops to take care of he was too busy to put his thoughts on paper, but during a year when he had nothing to care for, he had time to write something which would express his feelings.”

The authors are unknown of the following thoughts:

“I live in a land far out in the west

It isn’t a land, it’s only a jest;

Where the Russian thistles always

Grows

And the last time it rained – well

God only knows;

Where the oats are wild and the

grass is dry

And there’s never a cloud in the

virgin sky,

Where the sun is hot and it burns

like sin,

Oh, it’s a heck of a country that I

live in.

It continued:

“I live in a land that is nature’s joke

Where grasshoppers hop and people

are broke,

A place where moisture never drops

But babies and thistles are two sure

crops.

We work like dogs for the clothes on

our backs

And the State strips them off with an

income tax.

That’s just one reason why we’ll

never win,

Oh, it’s a heck of a country that I

live in.”

Certainly the way the settlers could laugh at their vicissitudes belongs in any history of a people.

Oh Nebraskaland, burnt Nebraskaland

As on the highest hill I stand

I look away across the plain

And wonder when it’s going to rain

We have no corn, we have no oats

We have no wheat to feed our

shoats.

The following was first sung in 1894 during a very dry year:

Oh Nebraskaland, sweet Nebraskaland

As on your burning soil I stand

I look away across the plains

And wonder why it never rains

Til Gabriel blows his trumpet sound

And says the rain has gone around.

In the next year, 1895, a wet year, a sequel appeared:

Oh Nebraskaland, sweet Nebraskaland

As on growing soil I stand

I look across the plain

To see the acres filled with grain

And feel like shouting out to all

What a hell of a crop we’ll have this

fall.

(I case you’re wondering what a “shoat” is, the dictionary described it as a young pig, usually under one year of age.)

A O