USPS

The temperature yesterday in Austin, TX was 97 and the heat index was 104. My USPS mail carrier was feeling the heat in more ways than one. As is the case most mornings, we exchange waves with each other. He begins his rounds in my neighborhood around 8 am and I’m using walking 12 year-old Laredo, our golden retriever. Laredo and I walked passed his mail truck. I noticed a white sedan stopped behind it. When the mail truck proceeded to the next mail box, the sedan followed slowing behind it. The person driving the sedan was wearing a neon safety vest.  I wondered, “management monitoring his…
He was in his truck, he was out of his truck.  He was in his truck, he was out of his truck. On a recent walk in the neighborhood, I couldn’t help but notice my mailman’s pattern of work. He was in-and-out of his truck many times to bring packages up to my neighbors’ front doors. “Lot of packages, eh?” I asked walking passed him. “More and more,” he said, starting up the mail truck again and driving off. A few houses up the street, he was out of his truck again as I again walked passed. “It’s going to be a long day, eh?” I commented. “Tis the season,” he said. “It will be like this till the…
tags: Gerty Cori, 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, glycogen metabolism, USPS commemorative stamps A stamp featuring Biochemist Gerty Cori, who together with her husband won a Nobel Prize in 1947 for discovering how the body processes glycogen. Chemists found a small flaw in the drawing of the "cori ester" molecule, a derivative of glycogen discovered by Gerty, but the US Postal Service will issue the stamp anyway, in March. Image: United States Postal Service [post box sized view].