Here is how a conversation might have happened with the publisher and the author of this book, Winifred Gallagher:
Publisher: So we are looking for a top-notch academically researched piece on the United States Post Office and what you have submitted here looks good!
Author: Awesome!
Publisher: Just one thing though, we are gonna need you to cover the history of Black Americans in the US Postal service, and make sure to talk also about women.
Author: Er..kay?
Publisher: Look, in 2016 liberal bookstores and publishers want to hear about Black Americans and women because they are the oppressed despite Women’s Lib, and despite the Civil War.
Author: Well…okay…I think I can make that happen…
The short outcome, of that hypothetical conversation, is that Gallagher did do that, but she did it in such a way that it is distracting. There are easily three other books within this book, and the identity crisis shows. The two other books should respectively be African Americans in the US Postal System, and Women and Their Role In the US Postal System. Or, it might have been better to divide the subject into the US Postal System previous to 1940 and then 1940 going forward. Why? Because this book, while offering a lot of awesome history, seeks to beat you across the face with the other two works when the narrative format does not support these excursions. There are moments where it does–where Postmasters are being discussed broadly and the discussion of the first woman Postmaster makes perfect sense. There are other times where it is more like, “So now we are going to talk about women because we must.” The change in focus is forced and unjustified. It makes the reading choppy and disconnected.
On the other hand, this book does an excellent job of showing how the early US Postal system was the glue that held the nation together when it came to educating citizens on the events of the day. There were those like Benjamin Franklin who figured out how to game the system and use their free franking privileges to make themselves wealthier. Of course, he also helped significantly improve the delivery of the mail by offering refinements to the postal system at large.
From these early origins we are ushered into the pre-Civil War US Postal System which is rough and tumble. Roads are in poor shape, and the job is dangerous in ways that directly imperil a person’s life–whether that be through Native American attacks–or natural phenomena like rivers that are flooding or hard to cross. Oh yeah, there are also thieves on the journey, who like stealing mail because there might be something worth stealing since the mail is the main way things are sent–like money or even later the Hope Diamond. This is where the Pony Express exists, and it was, indeed, a dangerous job that advertised that it preferred orphans who would not be missed should they not make it back home. Far from deterring applicants, it seemed to embolden them.
At the point we find ourselves in the company of Andrew Jackson, we begin to understand something about the spoils system and how politics began to interleave itself into the mail system via governmental appointments which typically paid well and had the perk of retirement–especially as the system became more modern.
As we move forward into the Civil War, we find another gutting by Lincoln of the US Postal Service which, more or less, removed many people who had held on from the time of Jackson. In the meantime, trains are beginning to become a dominant force for faster delivery of mail, and are starting to replace the horse. Of course, there are not trains available everywhere, so the horse delivery system must be kept for those areas that lack any other kind of means of delivery. The trains begin to act more like private carriers, and in addition to their efforts to make money as kinds of postal businesses, there are other places who, like the Pony Express, try to discover an angle to either make money doing private deliveries with priority, or to be awarded contracts by the US government by becoming a part of the US Postal system.
As things start to head into the 1900’s, we start seeing the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the turn toward mechanization. The Postal Service becomes behind the times due to infighting in the government about who can deliver what, and when. Everyone is after the money aspect of the situation, and no one wants to fund changes that are necessary to keep the system functional for contemporary usage. Everyone is depending, however, on the mail to run. Pulp kinds of books and magazines have specific rates that the publishers do not want to see change. Some of these are political newspapers, and some, according to the book, are little better than smut.
Eventually we are aloft in the air and we are introduced to the pilots who risk the early dangers of aviation that perform feats that would still be risky today with modern planes. We find ourselves, by the Great Depression, surrounded by some barnstormer pilots, and a postal system on the brink of collapse which causes New Deal economic forces to start construction programs on Post Office buildings. Fixing the Post Office up as a kind of cultural heritage of a region becomes the new reinvigoration though there still are massive problems with regard to labor forces and how the government can deal with a system that must run and yet is being simultaneously crippled.
It is around this juncture that another hypothetical conversation must have happened:
Publisher: You really, really need to focus on MORE women and MORE Black Americans! Turn the knob up from about a 3 to something like a 7!
Author: Okay, I think I can do that!
The author yanks off the knob and cranks the effort up to a 12, fearing the publishing contract will be nullified if the black/woman quota is not met.
So, naturally, there are many more references to black men and women in general in the more modern US Postal Service. At this point, a time-traveler arrives from the year 2025 and shakes the author by the shoulders and utters one word and only one word: FATIGUE!
The rest of the book, on a less flippant note, takes us right on up to the 60’s and 70’s where mail stops being delivered and Postal Workers begin to strike because they have had enough. Nixon, we discover, adopts the eagle as the US Postal logo in part because the horse used before as the symbol was hard to recognize. We learn about a system introduced in the 40’s that goes extinct in the 60’s which is a successful parallel US banking system which is run through the Post Office. Also, mechanization begins to assert an ever-increasingly more powerful grip on how the mail is run.
We take some forays into stamps and their value, and how collectors can get mad when the government does not let them purchase stamps they think will be valuable. We learn also, that releasing stamps of events is kind-of-a-big-deal and if it they commemorate someone in the modern time, it is usually the case they are dead since if they are still alive they can screw up their reputation in a way that reflects negatively on the Post Office.
What shines throughout the work, and invites comparison, is how the development of the internet mirrors closely that of the US Post Office. From centralized hubs, to the eventual hub and spoke systems, every kind of network architecture is discussed with regard to the postal system. The book concludes with the statement that the US Postal System failed to see the impact that the internet would have on mail and the US Postal System in general, and that failure was not for want of Postmasters who understood what was going to happen. Though the book does not say it, it is probably the case that many understood the problem, but who wanted to again assume the cost of changing the postal system? While the amount of letters may have dropped, the text notes that the increase in packages from shopping is sharply up. It turns out that to get goods from digital shopping, you still need someone to saddle up their horse, and actually take the package to the customer. Who knew?
It is toward the end of this book that I suspect the new book idea emerges as a conversation between author and publisher:
Publisher: All right, you got plenty of black people in there, and great job on the women. It reads smooth as butter. We need you to release a new book though. What we are thinking, and we are just spit-balling here, is that maybe you can cover the gay-trans-vampire contribution to the US Postal System. That, and people who identify as furries. Can you work that into a narrative on the history of the US Postal Service?
Author: Well, that is going to be difficult, but I suppose I could just always transition with the subtext of “Furries who never failed,” or “How Edward glittered his way into my mailbox even though I don’t know what pronouns to use.”
Publisher: Great, GREAT! I’m looking forward to it! Send it along when you work it up!
Rest assured, if this happens, thebooklight will review the copy, mercilessly.
Plebpoet is the alter ego of Jana Kelsay who has become a poet through a more unconventional means– through the ranks of a crypto-powered news network called stacker.news.
Plebeian is a Roman term that refers to the common people, which is what cryptocurrencies are, ideally, supposed to be serving as the “banking elite” have things the way they want them in the normal world of paper currency. These crypto solutions can also offer independent artists like Plebpoet a chance for expression and eventual publication, which is what Plebpoet has accomplished.
The body of poetry that Plebpoet has as an initial offering starts the reader off with the author observing that she is nothing special and has nothing to offer, though at one point she thought she did. Her poetry is aimed instead at those who are reading the work who are, instead, the extraordinary ones. The equation of what is or is not extraordinary is the ability to turn one’s gifts into currency, which one supposes Plebpoet has not done, and so is therefore not recognized as extraordinary–though poetry and financial success have seldom courted one another through time.
This idea of destroy the self-specialness in favor of the reader is a clever way to introduce the idea of cryptocurrency and its themes, where Plebpoet actually has some existence such that she has a voice.
The forward to the work proves to be a kind of foreshadowing, perhaps.
I’ll pay attention long enough
to one day suck in my breath
and close my mouth around
the whole wide world.
The line brings to mind the Garden of Eden and eating the forbidden fruit, only this time, the poet is attempting to eat or digest the world. The factor that causes the inability to do this is one’s attention in the verse. It could be, though, that the world is made to be a distraction so that one craves a higher nutritional food. That theme is not explored here, but the insinuation is there in this opening salvo.
The work then breaks in with the classical approach of one making love with one’s muses, which in this case is identifiable in theory with Sophia. As sex and knowledge have a long association with one another through many kinds of literature, the metaphor is not lost and does not imply a Sapphic desire in a carnal sense. The relationship bears no fruit, in the verse, because the page is left blank. When one eats the world, what fruit is there to give?
We move along to a more scientific sounding theme which has one eating the fruit of going to work via labor. Naturally, this is an unfulfilling prospect to a poet, and hearkens back to the 60’s Beatniks who also took up the theme at length. (Bob Dylan has made a whole career nearly on that point alone)
Soon we are facing an existential crisis as the world is stripping away the idealism of youth. If one were to characterize Plebpoet’s work as a whole, one could probably say it is filled to the brim with an existential angst and what remains when one is gone.
The interlude between poems has some good photography interspersed among different pieces rather like wasabi eating before various pieces of different sushi. It is better experienced than commented upon, and so nothing more on that point will be said here.
The yearning for an awakening becomes poignant and intense within the themes further metamorphosis, and instead of the world the author is desiring to bite into her own life and devour it for the rest of her life. The Ouroboros is left no meal but its own tail. It is not surprising then when death follows on the heels of that lyrical exploration and what becomes of poems or life when those who lived it are now gone?
A type of “steam” comes after the death, in the sense that the sensation of rising begins through the next passage, and my personal favorite of Plebpoet’s work manifests:
sitting idly by
my brother welcomed his son into the world yesterday
this morning I saw a train pulling along
a hundred tanks
his lungs weren’t clearing on their own,
he’s got tubes through his nose
someone is mobilizing some effort, somewhere, but I
can’t know it for certain
I know it’s his care in mind, this tiny baby,
but the tubes in his nose make me wretched
everyone along the path of the train slowed down, I
wonder if they thought of war as I did
What makes this specific poem compelling is how life and war are connected and considered in the same verse. The baby is fighting to breathe, and somewhere someone needs some tanks to feel like they can breathe in whatever effort it is that the tanks will be utilized concerning.
It makes the poet feel wretched since the tubes are a reminder of the struggle that is life, and this is reflected in the manner in which everyone slows down as the train slows down. For Plebpoet, she speculates that they might all be thinking about war and what it means or at least poses the thought. On the other hand, it could simply be that something about that moment in life is touching on something sacred and fragile all at once and the only answer is a kind of stillness.
There are still many themes left within the work for the reader to explore, but the analysis for the review ends here in that from this point forward, there are multiple paths forward and it is interesting, as an individual who has not read the full work, to consider what direction you might take from this juncture should this body of poems be yours up until now.
In a very bird’s-eye view way, we are all busy dying, living, birthing, living, yearning and growing in every breath. Why do we identify with one of those states in a given breath when all of them are present? Extremes can generate them, yes, but then, a train passing on a track with tanks in tow is not inherently extreme. A birth perhaps, is. Tanks in a museum, for instance, are not on their own extreme, but they can be the tools of those who are. Are the historical? Evil? A force for good? Maniacal? It all depends on how you breathe.
For what seems to be a first published work, not many poets get the chance to touch the sky–even if briefly. Plebpoet gets there and knocks on the heavens for a second. How she is greeted describes her descent that follows from that lofty journey. Or does it? Again, it depends on how you breathe.
After having reviewed Jon Pertwee’s Moon Boots and Dinner Suits which is the autobiography of his life, it was noted that there was another such work by him. That work is this one, also an autobiography, called I Am The Doctor.
The first autobiography focused on his life as a whole. It is disclosed in this book, that he wrote that one because his anticipation of being able to continue Worzel Gummidge post cancellation was first built up hopefully only to be dashed at the last minute by political maneuverings by the TV executives which were to be the new dispensers of the show on their network which was based partly in Ireland as well as in England. Since Gummidge had been what he started doing shortly after his time as The Doctor, it probably spurred him to take inventory of his life since there was an obvious kind of stop.
The same thing happened where his tenure as The Doctor on Doctor Who was concerned, but before we discuss that matter, it seems urgent to mention what frames this secondary autobiography is an answer to something Pertwee posed in song:
I cross the void beyond the mind The empty space that circles time I see where others stumble blind To seek a truth they never find Eternal wisdom is my guide I am the Doctor
Through cosmic waste the TARDIS flies To taste the secret source of life A presence science can’t deny Exists within, outside, behind The latitude of human minds I am the Doctor
My voyage dissects the course of time “Who knows?,” you say But are you right? Who searches deep to find the light That glows so darkly in the night Toward that point I guide my flight
As fingers move to end mankind Metallic teeth begin their grind With sword of truth I turn to fight The satanic powers of the night Is your faith before your mind? Know me Am I the Doctor?
The title of this autobiography would appear to answer that question in the affirmative, and the entirety of the work can be viewed with the lens that Pertwee was trying very hard NOT to be the Doctor in the sense of being typecast, but at the same time, when it came time to play the Doctor, he was told, basically, to be himself–which he did, and so if he was being typecast as the Doctor he was being typecast as himself.
I Am The Doctor walks us through Pertwee’s memories of being on the show and certain episodes and what they were like to record. We learn that his sidekick, Katy Manning, was nearly blind and had trouble filming certain episodes due to not being able to see what wasn’t there–but also not also being able to see the cues for where the thing ought to be. We learn that the actor who played the evil Master, Roger Delgado, who seemed to inspire fear was, in reality, scared of just about everything and had to constantly face those fears to play his role. We hear of the many ticks Pertwee orchestrates sometimes out of a goodly sense of fun, and sometimes because someone writes him a scathing letter and he wants that person to feel foolish for having done so. Mentioned are the love of cars for Pertwee, and how he helped design the “Whomobile” and how, on at least one occasion, he made another performer take him for the ride on the back of his scooter and chided him for not going fast enough while not knowing the brakes were out on the conveyance and that in order to stop the fellow had to use his feet on the front tire to squeeze it to a stop and so did not want to go terribly fast.
We get access to some personal facts about Pertwee–like the time someone shows up to his house with what he believes is an ex-girlfriend but turns out to be the ex-girlfriend’s daughter which suddenly explains why she has changed so little. We learn how Pertwee at one point got frustrated with a shoot, and decided to, while driving a vehicle, not to return but to keep on driving much to the chagrin of the assembled crew. Likewise, we learn how on another such occasion, he and Katy Manning got lost also much to the consternation and alarm of the filming crew while not returning after a drive scene and going for a country tour.
Particularly interesting is how, during one episode, Pertwee’s wife secretly arranges an episode of This Is Your Life to feature Pertwee without his knowing, which nearly ends in disaster before it gets started by his refusal to cooperate with the feints necessary to keep him unaware of the plan. What stands out in this re-telling is how Pertwee was deeply touched by seeing his former shipmates from World War II who he had not seen in years. Especially moving in this matter is the fact that he barely escaped from a ship, the Hood before it was blown to smithereens and how several times during Doctor Who he was returning to places he had fought battles in during the war. One imagines the dissonance from these events must have been great–to be filming where formerly immense German guns had been placed must have seemed peculiar at the least.
We see glimpses, also, of the Pertwee who was the ladies man who, during a stunt with wires, gets tangled up with a fellow male actor but wishes to try to arrange matters on the re-take to be entangled with the female actress instead.
Finally, we see Pertwee cast about after Roger Delgado dies in a car wreck that almost seems like a dark joke, and many others of the cast begin to depart the show and Delgado’s wife, ironically or fatefully named Kismet, cannot get any kind of insurance or help after she is left a widow other than from being given a vocal role in the show which features Pertwee’s final moments as the Doctor.
Those final moments as the Doctor, for Pertwee, were apparently racked with physical pain from back trouble he had acquired partly in the war, and partly from skiing in daredevil ways–and so his regeneration which looks peaceful was in reality quite painful. Pertwee really did not want to stop playing the Doctor, it seemed, but since everyone was leaving or dead, it felt to him to be a fitting conclusion to his tenure.
Afterwards, we hear a little about his other roles in some movies and his run of playing the scarecrow in Worzel Gummidge and how occasionally he is able to reconnect with the original crew for one event or another where filming certain special editions of Doctor Who are involved. One episode that stands out is around the 1994 Children in Need Special–Dimensions in Time. Pertwee encounters his fellow actors and actresses in ways that he does not expect, and because he makes observations that do not fit the way the script is written is accused of not having read the same by them. He remarks by this point that “all logic has gone out the door” and the script is a mess logically, as far as he is concerned–which is somewhat ironic in that Pertwee is a stickler for realism and details in the scripts and was accustomed to sending actors notes along with everyone else who regularly performed with him concerning how the actor or actresses fared. While an uncharitable reading of the autobiography might make a person think that Pertwee had become old enough to become careless in reading his scripts, by the end of the work it begins to become apparent that the problem had nothing to do with age whatsoever–but rather the identity of Jon Pertwee. When other members of the cast were to be his companions who were not, originally, his companions, since he had played the Doctor as himself, it simply did not make any sense.
But then, afterwards, we have Pertwee evaluating his work in the aftermath and how it becomes difficult as one gets older to get any other parts mostly because everyone, after you have been in something like Doctor Who has not seen you in awhile and so they conclude you are dead. Many other parts were unobtainable because, they said, Pertwee was too recognizable even though he points out that a scarecrow and the Doctor are not anything like each other and he was able to hold those roles and have successful outcomes.
Finally, Pertwee makes a self-appraisal that a role he holds much later–that of a Basque pornographer who happens to be an arsonist–is his best work. He laments that it does not catch on–one infers probably because it was a Basque pornographer who happened to be an arsonist– and then says he would like to fade out, rather like the Tardis in the show, but not quite yet. Apparently though, that was not to be, since twelve days after this book being sent to print Jon Pertwee had died of a heart attack. In some ways, it reads a little like the “Last Will and Testament” of Jon Pertwee, without, of course, his knowing it was to be so. I suspect he probably would have gotten a kick out of that had he been in on the “cosmic joke”.
Jon Pertwee, it seems, was trying to get away from the horrors of war and was trying to return to innocence and happened to play a character that became a kind of avatar of that desire. His secondary role for which he was widely known, that being the scarecrow in Gummidge, though not exactly a hero role in the same way as the Doctor was also still aimed at children. Then, like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, Jon Pertwee played with some fire on the less than child-friendly side of the spectrum, believed that to be his best work, and then died after confessing, of course, that he was, indeed, The Doctor–the very same Doctor who fights evil and holds his faith before his mind–which is a considerable mind after all. Pertwee tells his fans, almost like a kind of post narration, “Yeah, that’s me!” Then, after the big reveal, he exits stage right. What a performance–and what a convoluted way to reach a conclusion!
Pertwee it seemed, lived long enough to be cast as a villian when he was all ready cast by everyone else as a hero. He tried the black hat–it did not fit. In the end, he was The Doctor.
ISBN: 978-0143130062
ISBN: 1852276215