Quick hits: Visit the last linotype machine newspaper; 'app store accountability' law; memoir celebrates snail mail delivery; small town battle over Buc-ee's

While other papers have transitioned to computer technology, the Saguache Crescent remains the country's last linotype machine newspaper, reports Jared Ewy for The Daily Yonder. While other newspapers use keyboards, this small-town Colorado paper continues to use heat and metal to produce the news, just as it has since 1882. "News outlets from around the world have come to visit and pay tribute to the century-old linotype machine," Ewy reports. "At the Crescent, a keystroke sends us through time and into an America dominated by heavy, hot industry. When even the words were made of molten labor. Letters and characters are hammered with Steampunk gusto on different-sized mattes and assembled into information."

In a bid to protect minors from downloading apps with questionable content, Louisiana became the third state "to pass what it described as an 'app store accountability' law, joining Texas and Utah in instituting such legislation," reports Christ Teale of Route Fifty. The bill requires app stores conducting business in Louisiana to "identify when users are children and obtain parental consent before apps can be downloaded." Louisiana's law also requires app stores to include age-appropriate ratings and "prevents them from enforcing terms of service on minor users without parental consent."

The U.S. Postal Service and its brave mail carriers helped shape the nation, and some would contend, it's part of the glue still holding the country together. "The Postal Service is America’s first miracle and among its most endangered, threatened by private delivery services, email, texting and the pensions owed to retired carriers," writes David Von Drehle for The Washington Post. "Memoirist Stephen Starring Grant offers a highly personal, utterly charming tribute to this American treasure in his new book, Mailman. . . .The Postal Service, he convincingly argues, is far from outdated; it is the embodiment of an indivisible nation."

A drama pitting anti-sprawl conservation against a beaver-booming, mega-gas station continues to unfold in the small western town of Palmer Lake, Colorado. "Emotions have boiled over in Palmer Lake since the Texas-based Buc-ee’s chain — featuring a grinning beaver mascot — targeted undeveloped land along Interstate 25 for a new outlet: a 74,000-square-foot store with 60 gas pumps and parking for nearly 800 cars, open 24 hours a day," reports Jim Carlton of The Wall Street Journal. "It has become an epic battle over the soul of the American West — and it has descended into accusations of harassment, slashed tires, crude name-calling and vicious private texts made public."

Thousands of American children have type 1 diabetes, which, when treated, can mean a lifetime of carrying equipment and a list of activity restrictions that can make kids feel self-conscious. To help ease some of those challenges, Mattel released a Barbie with the disease. "The latest Barbie slays in a chic blue polka-dot crop top, ruffled miniskirt, chunky heels and an insulin pump. She is the brand’s first doll with type 1 diabetes," reports Brenda Goodman of CNN News. "Dollmaker Mattel worked with Breakthrough T1D, formerly known as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, to design the doll, which aims to represent the roughly 304,000 kids and teens living with type 1 diabetes in the United States . . . . The new Barbie comes with an insulin pump, a glucose monitor and snacks to help her control her blood sugar."

With all the business of life, it's still important to take time to look up and see what going on in our skies. On the mornings of July 21 and 22, the Moon, Venus and Jupiter will provide a beautiful scene "with the crescent Moon and Venus, plus several bright stars. And if you have a clear view toward the horizon, Jupiter is there too, low in the sky," writes Preston Dyches for NASA. During the entire month of July, the Eagle constellation, Aquila, "appears in the eastern part of the sky during the first half of the night. Its brightest star, Altair, is the southernmost star in the Summer Triangle, which is an easy-to-locate star pattern in Northern Hemisphere summer skies."

House panel has a ‘near-universal consensus’ on pausing the U.S. Postal Service’s planned changes

The USPS will have new leadership who may rethink
 recent plans. (Photo by Clay Leconey, Unsplash)

Over the past few decades, the United States Postal Service has struggled to stay financially afloat and transition from a letter-delivery service to more of a package-delivery service. USPS leadership has faced an uphill battle to maintain its mission — to accept and deliver mail to every address in the U.S., its territories, and possessions — while remaining solvent.

The last Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, retired after his 10-year plan, Delivering for America, floundered and repeatedly angered lawmakers. “As a new leader takes the helm of the U.S. Postal Service, a House panel debated the future of the independent entity,” reports Sean Michael Newhouse of Government Executive. “There was a near-universal consensus on pausing and even reversing" DeJoy's plans. 

Mike Plunkett, the CEO and president of the Association for Postal Commerce, told the panel, “Under the Delivering for America plan, our members have suffered unprecedented rate increases and service degradation. . . . If the incoming PMG is to have any chance at success, the postal service must immediately pause implementation of Delivering for America.”

Plunkett suggested a “moratorium on rate increases, a pause in spending on building new facilities and halting any product changes while new leadership assesses what reforms to keep, modify or unwind,” Newhouse writes. “Jim Cochrane, the CEO of the Package Shippers Association, a trade organization, testified that USPS needs a ‘new vision’ to improve its finances.”

David Steiner, who previously served as the CEO of Waste Management and as a member of the FedEx board, was selected by the bipartisan USPS Board of Governors to become the next Postmaster General.

“DeJoy was pressured to resign [in March] due to conflicts with the Department of Government Efficiency," Newhouse reports. “President Donald Trump, who reportedly backed Steiner, has mused about privatizing USPS or folding it under the Commerce Department.”

U.S. postal workers and letter carriers push against Trump and Musk's privatizing pitch

USPS has the largest physical and logistical infrastructure
of any non-military government institution. (Photo via IPR)

The U.S. Postal Service continues its uphill battle to modernize its processes and manage its financial woes. Meanwhile, it faces a new challenge -- the possibility of privatization by the Trump administration. Mail carriers and advocates believe privatizing the USPS would leave rural residents facing slower and fewer mail deliveries.

"In recent weeks, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have floated the idea of privatizing U.S. mail services," reports Michael Livingston of Interlochen Public Radio, which serves northern Michigan. "Trump said he’s considering putting USPS under the control of the Commerce Department, which he says will help fix declining profits at USPS. The agency has been independent and mostly self-funded since 1970."

Letter carriers oppose the change, with Trump and Musk's discussion leading to "mass protests by postal workers and letter carriers across the country last month. A national 'day of action' took place in more than 150 cities on March 20," Livingstone adds. "Letter carriers say that would be detrimental to rural areas . . ."

Doug Bartlett, president of the Michigan Rural Letter Carriers Association, told Livingston, "If a private company comes in and takes over the post office, they're going to cherry-pick where they can make money, and that's going to be our urban areas, short distances to get out and deliver stuff. And it's going to be our rural areas that'll be poor."

The USPS delivers to every address in the nation, which means its carriers are the ones getting checks, medicines and election ballots to the most remote-living Americans. Any changes to its services mean rural areas will likely be impacted. Bartlett told Livingston, "Rural delivery out in the real rural areas could be cut back to maybe as much as one or two days a week. That would be devastating for people that need those items."

Rural letter carriers rally against USPS privatization; about 51.3 million rural Americans could be impacted

More than 100 rural letter carriers gathered to rally
against USPS privatization. (The Daily Yonder photo)

Rural letter carriers from around the country gathered last week at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. to "rally in support of the U.S. Postal Service, which they said faces an increasing threat of privatization under President Donald Trump," reports Julia Tilton for The Daily Yonder. "The rally was attended by members of Congress from both sides of the aisle."

The event also announced the "launch of the NRLCA’s National Campaign to Protect the U.S. Postal Service from Privatization, which the union said is its top priority to preserve what it calls a 'critical institution that serves rural America and the country at large,'" Tilton writes. "Approximately 51.3 million rural addresses would be disproportionately impacted by the privatization of the USPS, according to NRLCA National President Don Maston."

Part of the USPS service mandate is to get mail and packages across the "last miles," which can add to delivery expenses. Tilton explains, "It is unprofitable for private companies to deliver mail to the end of long dirt roads located 50 or 100 miles from the nearest post office, Maston said. Privatization would add surcharges to such rural deliveries, which include essential goods like prescription medications and documents like Social Security checks and ballots."

Maston told the Yonder: “Rural Americans rely on rural carriers. In fact, the entire community relies on the rural carrier, and that sense of community would be taken away, and the disproportionately impacted group in the Postal Service would be rural carriers, rural Americans, and rural communities.”

Rally speakers "called for bipartisan support for House Resolution 70, a resolution in the House of Representatives that affirms the Postal Service’s role as a federal institution and opposes privatization," Tilton adds. "Since being introduced at the end of January, the resolution has garnered 180 cosponsors. . . . After the rally, more than 100 rural postal workers headed to meetings with members of Congress to ask for their support in backing the USPS."