Philadelphia 2006

In 2006, I was a delegate to the APWU National Convention in Philadelphia. Even though it was summertime, the weather was nice. Not too hot, humidity not bad. We stayed in the old area, a couple of blocks from Benjamin Franklin's grave. We walked past it every day on the walk to the Convention Center downtown.

We visited the Ben Franklin house, the first post office, the liberty bell, and all sorts of historic places. We participated in a humongous picket of the old main post office. It was a great visit.




People put pennies on Ben Franklin's grave every day.



This was a photo on the wall of the old Post Office Museum. The Flat Sorting Machine from the 1980s, and 1990s. I got a bid on this machine in March of 1991. You keyed the codes using a normal 9 key pad and took out the full tubs of mail. I lost the job when the machines were modified to read the addresses. On the new-fangled machine you didn't key in codes, you just loaded the mail on the induction belt. The machines in 2006 were again modified to where the flats are automatically inducted. So now you don't even have to load the mail onto the belt, you watch the mail load all by itself. Every time there was a modification, the need for live bodies was reduced. This is why we are running out of jobs at the USPS these days.



This is a photo of what I was originally hired for: The Letter Sorting machine, or LSM. The king of clerk jobs in the 1970s and 1980s. You sat there while a letter was dropped in front of you at the rate of one a second. You had to read the address, figure out where to send it, and key in the code on a funky one of a kind keyboard, the likes of which you will never see on any other machine anywhere. It was very hypnotic. I worked on this machine from 1985 until I got my Flats bid in 1991. The last of these LSMs were removed from USA post offices and sent to China in the late 1990's.



Mr Zippy


I always kind of had a thing for the guy.



In front of the Museum.




My friend Sandi and me in front of the Liberty Bell. I don't know why, but I always thought the bell would be bigger than what it is. But it was cool to be there in its presence, regardless of its size.



My fellow Union Local members Sandi, Ed, Vito, and Jim, at the big picket. Just about everyone at the convention participated in the picket. We were all bused across town to the old main post office. Every convention schedules a picket for the delegates to participate in. There are thousands of us marching with signs, trying to get our message out, whatever the message happens to be.