Roger O Green

Z is for ZIP Codes

I’m old enough to remember when one mailed a letter to large cities in the United States, he or she would place a one- or two-digit number between the city and state. The oft-advertised Spiegel catalog was at Chicago 9, Illinois. (The postage for a one-ounce first-class letter was four or five cents.) I’ve since discovered that the United States Post Office Department (USPOD) implemented postal zones for large cities in 1943.

Then on July 1, 1963, the Post Office introduced the Zone Improvement Plan. The country was carved into 10 sections, 0 to 9. From there, 5-digit numbers (codes) were developed to identify each post office associated with an address. It was also the time that the two-letter state postal abbreviations were instituted.

I was fascinated as a kid by this. Just from the first digit in the ZIP Code, I knew where a letter came from. If it started with 0, it was from New England, New Jersey, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and military addresses in the European theater; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is 09360.

So, in New York State, 100-102 are Manhattan, 103 is Staten Island, 104 is the Bronx. 105 is suburban New York, with the places listed alphabetically, 106 is White Plains and so forth through 119, on the tip of Long Island. 120 and 121 are suburban Albany, 122 is Albany and 123 is Schenectady. Certain businesses or other institutions have their own ZIP Codes. 10048 is the zip code assigned to the former World Trade Center in New York City. The State University of New York in Albany is 12222, while the SUNY campus in Buffalo is 14222. ZIP Code 12345 is General Electric in Schenectady. And Spiegel is now ZIP Code 60609.

When I worked at a store in Albany in the 1980s, I decided to figure out where the orders for a horror film book was coming from. A decidedly large plurality of the requests, for some reason, were from 480 and 481, wealthy suburban Detroit.

In 1983, the US Postal Service began using an expanded ZIP Code called “ZIP+4.” “A ZIP+4 code consists of the original five digit ZIP Code plus a four digit add-on code. The four digit add-on number identifies a geographic segment within the five digit delivery area, such as a city block, office building, individual high-volume receiver of mail, or any other unit that would aid efficient mail sorting and delivery.” It is not mandated, but businesses use it often and there are savings to be had for bulk mailings.

On rare occasions, a place is assigned a ZIP code that does not match the rest of the state, e.g. the place is so remote that it is better served by a center in another state. “For example, Fishers Island, NY, which is off Long Island, NY, has ZIP code 06390 and is served from Connecticut, while all other New York ZIP codes begin with 1. Some Texas ZIP codes are served from New Mexico and have codes beginning with 8 rather than 7.” And something I only discovered recently: “returned government parcels from the District of Columbia are sent to ZIP codes beginning with 569, so that returned parcels are security checked at a remote facility, put into place after after the anthrax scare.”

The Census Bureau does not tabulate data by U.S. Postal Service ZIP Code. Instead, it created a new statistical entity called the ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) to meet requests by data users for statistical data by ZIP Code. ZCTAs are close area approximations of USPS ZIP Codes service areas. For more information, go here.

Find a ZIP Code by entering an address here.

Hey, you ABC Wednesday folks from outside the U.S.: how do YOUR postal postscripts work? I know that Canada has an alphanumeric system, and the first letter is roughly alphabetical from east to west across the provinces, with the territories last (X and Y).
ROG

Ask Al Gore – or not

I got this e-mail recently: We’re hoping Ramblin With Roger will support our No Hunger campaign on July 13th. Thank you for your previous interest in our organization, Action Against Hunger, which you referred to in one of your articles. We would like to invite you to participate in our upcoming campaign.

And I do support them. To have hunger on this planet with the resources available is utterly insane. And the organization that wrote to me, Action Against Hunger, a/k/a Action Contre la Faim, or ACF is a fine, fine organization with an excellent record of using its resources wisely.

So, the next paragraphs:

The global humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger is launching No Hunger with a trailer to Al Gore’s next film—a film that doesn’t exist yet—about acute malnutrition, a disease that kills 5 million children each year. We’re asking people to view the trailer and sign the petition asking Gore to make the film. The petition will be presented to Al Gore this December at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

You can view the movie trailer at www.AskAlGore.org

Just as An Inconvenient Truth helped reshape climate change, an Al Gore film called No Hunger could mobilize the support needed to end childhood deaths from malnutrition—a predictable, preventable condition that threatens 55 million children every year. We now have the tools to end acute malnutrition; we just need the support.

I guess my ambivalence is twofold: 1) the passion he has that showed up in An Inconvenient Truth about global warming goes back decades, long before he was in public service, and is not necessarily transferable to the issue of hunger, though there is a linkage between global warming and hunger; and 2) I don’t know that Al Gore even HAS another movie in him, and that in any case, I’m not inclined to badger him into making another film, however worthy the cause.

So, my message to Al Gore is more muted; if your heart is into making a film about global warming, then by all means, please do so.

All that said, please consider contributing to the organization. You can follow them on Facebook and and Change and YouTube.

ROG

The In-Laws

Talked about my family a couple days ago; time to talk about my in-laws.

Actually I may get along better with them than my birth family. and in the main, I see them more often, since they’re located in New York and Pennsylvania rather than North Carolina and California.

Still, I was quite nervous about this scheduled family vacation. It was to be my parents-in-law, two brothers-in-law, their wives and, collectively, three daughters who are 7 and 8, plus Carol, Lydia and me. The plan, as it shook out was that we would all travel to Williamsburg, VA for a week. i thought that much familiarity would surely breed contempt. But it was to celebrate my parents=in-law’s 50th wedding anniversary that was back in March; we’d done something then at their church, but this was actually planned in the fall of 2008.

Separately: Williamsburg in July wasn’t my idea of a good time. I’ve been to Virginia in July with an ex-girlfriend. We went out early in the morning but spent most of the day in air-conditioned comfort.

As it turned out, my wife had too much reading to do and too many papers to write, details of which will be forthcoming.

Then Wednesday, my wife’s sister-in-law (does that make her my sister-in-law as well?), who lives a little over an hour from Albany, had thyroid surgery at an Albany hospital. I actually never saw her; I spoke to, though never saw her husband. But their eight-year-old twins were at the house, and the parents-in-law were up to support their daughter-in-law and help watched the girls. In fact, My wife, her mother, my daughter and the twins all went to Saratoga for a ballet matinee on Thursday.

Now today, is the Olin family reunion, and I’m likely to see the whole tribe that was in Williamsburg, save for the recovering surgery patient.

we don’t usually spend THAT much time together, but it certainly a different relationship when the distances are smaller.
ROG

Beatles cover music QUESTION

In my tradition of playing the music that I own, I have divvied up my Beatles music thusly:
In October, in honor of John’s birthday, I play the canon. In this case, the British CDs (including Magical Mystery Tour, which became adopted as such), plus the two Past Masters CDs of singles, B-sides, EPs cuts and oddities.
In February, in honor of George’s birthday, I play the American albums. George, visiting his sister Louise, was the first of the Beatles to visit the U.S.
In June, in honor of Paul’s birthday, I play the more recent items: Live at the BBC, the Anthology series, and Love, e.g.
In July, in honor of Ringo’s birthday I play Beatles covers. After all, Ringo’s All-Starr bands are known to cover the hits of the contributing musicians.

And I have LOTS of whole albums dedicated to Beatles covers. Some are of whole albums: Big Daddy doing Sgt. Pepper, a MOJO collection replicating Revolver, George Benson taking on Abbey Road. There are whole soundtracks: All This and World War II, I Am Sam, Across the Universe.

So what are your favorite Beatles covers? I am fond of these:

Come Together by Tina Turner; Aerosmith’s take is fine, but too close to the original
Eleanor Rigby by Aretha Franklin (she puts it in the first person); though the pure excess of both the Vanilla Fudge and Rare Earth versions always made me chuckle.
Got To Get You Into My Life by Earth, Wind and Fire; one of the only good things to come out of the Sgt. Pepper’s movie debacle.
In My Life by Judy Collins; though there are other fine versions, notably Johnny Cash’s.
We Can Work It Out by Stevie Wonder; I once bought an LP just for that song.
You Can’t Do that by Harry Nillson, which segues in other Beatle tunes in a most delightful way.

Special kudos to Joe Cocker, who made several Beatles’ tunes his own. but the one I’m currently most fond of is You’ve got to Hide your Love Away

And there undoubtedly others. The readers of Rolling Stone magazine pick their favorites.

What’s your least favorite Beatles covers?

There’s a whole slew of older artists of the Beatles era trying too hard to be hip and relevant but feeling like the lounge singer Bill Murray used to play on Saturday Night Live (or a slightly more current reference, the Sweeney Sisters).

Still my thumbs are down to two pop music legends of the 1960s. The Supremes doing A Hard Day’s Night, originally on an album I owned called A Bit of Liverpool. “It’s ben a hard (hard) day’s (day’s) night.” Disliked it on first hearing. the other is Elvis Presley doing an off-key and listless version of Hey Jude; just unpleasant to listen to. (Though not eligible for consideration, Mitch Miller’s version of Give Peace A Chance is a HOOT.)

ROG

Don’t Tread on Me

Ever have something seemingly minor drive you utterly bonkers? Well, that happened to me last month. But in retrospect, it was building up for a while.

My five-year-old daughter and I were flying from Albany, NY to Charlotte, NC on Friday, June 12. I was pretty sure I couldn’t bring the six-ounce juices my wife packed – I looked up the 311 rule and she stayed near enough to the security gate that the TSA employee could hand the drinks back to her. Then we did the shoes-off thing. They determined that my daughter and I did not meet the profile of terrorists. In any case, as a society, we have tacitly agreed to allow the process. Still, I fly infrequently enough for the process to be disconcerting anew.

Monday, my mother, two sisters and I go to my niece’s high school graduation. It is held at the Bojangles Coliseum, formerly the Charlotte Coliseum; the naming rights are from the food chain. We’ve received instructions on what not to bring into the venue, which included balloons (understandable – could obstruct the view of others) and noisemakers (likewise a reasonable decision). The sheet also said, vaguely, “no gifts”. So we go through security. Something about these quasi-official folks doing stuff similar to the TSA screeners, including us going through both the metal detector AND being wanded, was mildly unsettling.

Then I was told that my daughter could not bring in her stuffed kitty cat. Why not? Because it’s a gift. It’s not a “gift”; it’s my child’s toy. Doesn’t matter. Thus, I had to schlep back to the car – and having gotten there early, it was some distance away – to return the forbidden feline.

Monday, after the graduation, we go to this – I guess you’d call it an outdoor mall in downtown Charlotte that had a variety of stores, restaurants and activities, including a movie theater.

My sisters, mother, niece, niece’s boyfriend and niece’s friend all went to this burger joint. But the daughter and I couldn’t go there; the food is cooked in peanut oil and the daughter is allergic to peanuts. (The first tip-off that this venue would be a problem: the barrel of peanuts in the entryway.) So she and I ordered from a nearby competitor then sat down at the table outside, soon joined by my sisters, with food from the peanut oil place.

Some young woman comes out of the place where I had ordered my food – not the person with whom I placed the order – and announces, “I’m sorry but I cannot allow you to sit there.” One sister asks why, and she’s told that it’s a space for their customers only. But my brother IS a customer, and he’s waiting on my food from YOUR establishment, and he’s waiting with my family to do so, one sister explains. Confused, the young woman went back into the establishment, never to return.

Actually, I was mildly sympathetic to the employee’s position. I’m sure the establishment pays rent for the tables in front of the place; this was not a common food court setup. And subsequent to that interaction, ANOTHER woman from the peanut oil place sat in front of the place – one could tell by the distinctive red and white cups. However, there was NO signage either on the tables or in the windows of the establishment, so it’s their failing, I say.

After eating, we wandered around, seemingly aimlessly, waiting for niece and friend to drop off the boyfriend. They ultimately return and I come across a little shop that is selling, among other things, snacks I could take on the plne the next day. A bag of Cheetos – $1.29 plus nine cents tax.

We come upon a bowling alley, and people decide to go in. I have the daughter in one hand, my drink from supper – actually just ice at that point (it was hot and humid) in the other; one of my sisters is holding the Cheetos. Apparently, though there’s no sign outside and I didn’t see one inside, there’s no “outside food” allowed. So my sister hands over the Cheetos. I walk over to the person at the desk, snatch the Cheetos back, and say, “I don’t agree to this,” and walked out with the daughter.

When the rest come out of the bowling alley, my sister asks why was I making such a big deal about a bag of junk food. I couldn’t really articulate it, and I just snapped, “Because I just don’t like it.”

In retrospect, it’s quite obvious what the issue was: control, or lack thereof.

[Musical interlude]

My sister had inadvertently ceded to a dubious authority what little power I had in the situation.

And not only in the circumstances already alluded to, either. Dinner at 8:30 pm when my daughter should have been in bed the first night. I forgot my daughter’s glasses at the house on Sunday, but after two church services and after-church receptions, instead of going to the house to get glasses, we’re at Wal-Mart (Allah help me) for 3.5 hours. Now part of that was waiting for a photo shoot that, because the photograph never even acknowledges us 45 minutes after the appointment time, we never have taken. And there was other stuff. As I was losing control of my circumstances, and more importantly, my daughter’s circumstances, I was losing control of my temper as well.

[When I explain the scenario to people face-to-face, they seem to understand. Wonder if I seem like a crazy person as I put it in the written form.]

I try to make a point not to go to places that have signage that makes you leave your bags at the door. Their message: we want your patronage, but we don’t trust you. I especially hate the stores that check your store bags on the way out. Their message: we HAVE your patronage, but we STILL don’t trust you.

I haven’t been to Crossgates Mall, near Albany, in years. Last time I was up there, there was a sign at the movie theater entrance: no backpacks allowed. I thought this was fine; they don’t want people sneaking food in. And since I almost always have my backpack, I just won’t attend movies at your theater. Everybody’s happy. I have control of the situation.

Thus ends my report, My Summer Vacation. At least Part 1.
ROG