Write Off

SIGNATURE'S Picture Caption Contest No. 61

Chairman Sam Ervin of the Senate Watergate Committee rests his head in his hands as he listens to Vice President Gerald Ford deliver the commencement address at North Carolina's Ravenscroft School.

### SECOND PRIZE $20

"We're running a special on wheat again this year. How much surplus coffee do you have?"

W. G. Knause, Addyston, Ohio

### THIRD PRIZE $10

"Sure I've been traveling abroad for months, but I never forgot you, or Pat, Mr. President."

Harold Nelson, Stoughton, Mass.

### RUNNERS-UP $5

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before? Israel, Egypt, China...?"

Roger D. Vanderhye, Flossmoor, Ill.

"I took care of everything. The Weight Watcher dinners are in the oven."

Rose Maiella, Newark, N.J.

"You're doing fine. Next we'll try to skate backwards."

Carole Bowman, New York, N.Y.

## CONTEST RULES

1. Caption it; 2. Send it; 3. Collect cash for it.

<table><tr><td>First prize</td><td>$50</td></tr><tr><td>Second prize</td><td>$20</td></tr><tr><td>Third prize</td><td>$10</td></tr><tr><td>Next 10 prizes</td><td>$5</td></tr></table>

Winning captions for Contest No. 61 will be published in the November issue of *Signature*. A new contest will appear each month. Send captions by postcard only, and be sure to include contest number with your entry. News photographers are invited to submit photographs for consideration. Prevailing space rates will be paid if used. Contest No. 61 closes Sept. 20, 1974. Send captions to:

Contest Editor
*Signature Magazine*
260 Madison Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10016

Entries will be judged on originality of content. Duplicate prizes will be awarded for identical winning entries. Editors' decisions are final and no entries will be returned.

"Eat your heart out, Arthur Murray."

Maj. John D. De Martini, Falls Church, Va.

"Keep smiling. The embassy is on fire."

Jim Duncan, Hollywood, Calif.

"And how many string bikinis did you bring me?"

Ed Scholl, Ithaca, N.Y.

"Here's a sawbuck. Gimme the best table in the house."

Kathleen Middings, San Ramon, Calif.

"No, I am the tallest, so I vill lead und you vill follow."

Capt. James P. Isenhower Jr.,
Fort Rucker, Ala.

"Sorry I'm late, I ran out of gas..."

Ann Hardesty, Redondo Beach, Calif.

"You stay right here and stop crying. I'll go tell the policeman we're lost."

Mrs. G. W. Quinn, Florissant, Mo.

74 Signature September 1974

Punch Line

The Post Office: A Modern Miracle by Ralph Schoenstein

One morning last week, while sitting at home waiting for a letter that had been mailed five days before from a house a mile away, I began to ponder my investment portfolio. Half of my money is tied up in special delivery stamps, the only ones that can inspire America's pony express to move the mail overnight.

What's worse, I have lately become emotionally as well as financially involved in special delivery, in its thrilling 28-hour journey through the badlands of New York, in the suspense of not knowing whether the mailman will deliver it or return it to the post office. Recently a card on my doorknob stated that the mailman had tried to make a special delivery and failed. Since he hadn't slipped the letter under my door, I presume that he is either a man of rather limited resourcefulness or that he wants to make friends with me.

Had I talked to him, I would have been sympathet-
ic, for I certainly appreciate that the Post Office has
its problems. The biggest of these is that it has to
carry the mail, a task to which it is no longer geared.

Now I know what you're probably thinking: no
matter how bad the American mail may be, it is still
the best in the world. Well, your patriotism, I'm
afraid, is misplaced. Our service is clearly better than
Italy's (where the postal workers have been known to
sell undelivered mail for pulp when too much of it
piles up), but a U.S. Senator was recently able to say
with authority, "In no primitive country is the mail
as slow as ours." In fact, a CBS study has just
revealed that the average speed of American air mail
is no faster than first-class surface mail. And the
average speed of surface mail, as we can tell CBS, is
no faster than a middle-aged mule.

For the past quarter-century, my relationship with
the Post Office has been slowly crumbling. When I
was a boy and a stamp cost three cents, the mailman
was a swift gray Santa who brought me Captain
Midnight decoders and Lone Ranger magic rings,
sometimes twice a day. But by the time I was 25 and
losing interest in magic rings, stamps were four cents
and deliveries were made only once a day (if you
were lucky). At any time between 10 a.m. and two,
we could suddenly receive the nine o'clock delivery.

By the late Sixties, as the price of stamps kept
increasing, I discovered a fundamental truth: there is
a direct connection between the postal service and

the rates—as the latter goes up, the former goes down.

To learn why a letter now requires five days to
cross New York City, I decided to inspect the main
post office there. The place was a beehive of
inactivity, with a few men leisurely picking letters off
a conveyor belt in a room as still as a library.

"They're culling," said the postal official leading
my guided tour of one.

They were fingering the mail as if going through
garbage, picking out big letters and flipping them over
their shoulders into a moving trough.

"It's real hand craftsmanship," I said. "You don't
see too much of that in this age of automation."

"Now you see these other men," said my guide,
"they're working only on first-class mail. That gets
special handling. As soon as it comes in, it goes right
onto the belt. It's all very streamlined."

The belt, I had to admit, was post-Industrial
Revolution; and so was the next thing I saw.

"Just look at that baby!" said my guide. "The
Mark II canceling machine."

Here at last was something to marvel at. The Mark
II canceled letters like a machine gun, thus putting
great strain on the system. It was much too modern
for the post office. It was like putting power steering
on a roller skate.

As we passed through a roomful of pigeonholes,
two of the cullers were sitting on a table, lost in
music that was, of all things, Beethoven's *Fifth
Symphony*. With our postal clerks already in a state
of arousal from Beethoven, I shuddered to think of
the service that would have resulted had they been
listening to Debussy.

As I toured the building, I started to wonder about
a cure for the dying mail system. Is it higher salaries?
Or faster symphonies?

Looking for the five-day hold box, I found a box
full of wallets.

"Pickpockets drop 'em in mailboxes after they've
taken the money," my guide said.

The wallets had arrived before some of the mail;
and they didn't even carry zip codes.

"So that's why so many mailboxes are jammed," I
said. But I learned that this wasn't the answer. Urban
mailboxes are jammed because the world's greatest
industrial nation still hasn't made a box that will
stack the letters as they drop.

Signature September 1974

THE SECRETARY OF STATE
WASHINGTON

September 18, 1974

Dear Meredith:

It was a pleasure meeting and talking to
you at Caneel Bay Plantation, and I hope we
see one another again sometime.

I am enclosing my photograph.

Henry A. Kissinger

Miss Meredith Sherman,
Greenwood and Oak Drives,
Bridgeton, New Jersey.

S:KK:rj

January 19, 1976

Dear Miss Sheskin:

It was very kind of you to think of
my wife and me during the holiday season
with your most thoughtful and enlightening
gift of "Shema Israel".

We thank you and wish you a very happy
and successful 1976.

Miss Sandra Sheskin,
Room 1828,
Department of State,
Washington, D.C.

The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Chatham House 10 St James's Square London SW1Y 4LE
Telephone 01 930 2233 Cables Areopagus London

Patron Her Majesty the Queen

6 July 1976

Dear Henry Kissinger

Having now returned from a brief trip to Italy, where I went shortly after your visit here on 25 June, I am writing to thank you for that part of the day which you spent talking to us at Chatham House.

It really was an occasion that several of us had looked forward to for some time past, and it lived fully up to our expectations. I was glad that the questions that were put to you did elicit some of your wider ranging reflections about the current and prospective balance of influence, as well as of power, in the international system. Since I was with you again in the evening and also heard your lecture at the IISS, I was left at the end of it all most especially admiring how much you can pack into a single day. It is all the more admirable because so much of what is packed in this way is thought, as well as mere action!

Thank you once again for coming here and talking to us, under the benign - and as I said, slightly idealised - gaze of Lord Castlereagh.

Dr. Henry Kissinger
Secretary of State
State Department
Washington, D.C.
USA

Chairman Lord Trevelyan KG GCMG CIE OBE LLD
Vice-Chairman Michael Howard MC
Hon Treasurer David Rae Smith MC

Director Andrew Shonfield
Director of Studies Ian Smart
Administrative Director Eileen Menzies

WOLF TRAP FARM PARK FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS FILENE CENTER

THE WOLF TRAP FOUNDATION

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Mrs. Richard Nixon
Honorary Chairman

Mrs. Jouett Shouse
Donor

Melvin R. Laird
Chairman

Boyd Lewis
Vice Chairman

Hobart Taylor, Jr.
Vice Chairman

Douglas R. Smith
Treasurer

Ralph E. Becker
General Counsel

Robert O. Anderson
Mrs. James M. Beggs
Mrs. John B. Connally
John J. Corson
Gerald T. Halpin
George B. Hartzog, Jr.
Mrs. Richard G. Kleindienst
Mrs. Albert D. Lasker
Mrs. John J. Louis
Mrs. Elizabeth S. May
Bradshaw Mintener
Mrs. Rogers C. B. Morton
Mrs. Franklin Orr
Mrs. David Packard
Dr. Joseph C. Palamountain, Jr.
Robert A. Podesta
I. Lee Potter
John J. Robertson
David A. Schulte, Jr.
Miss Beverly Sills
C. R. Smith
Robert H. Smith
Roger L. Stevens
W. Clement Stone
Ronald H. Walker
C. Langhorne Washburn
Miss Barbara M. Watson
Claude C. Wild, Jr.
Robert W. Wilson

Julius Rudel
Artistic Advisor
Howard J. Feldman
Secretary
Joseph Leavitt
Executive Director

October
Twelfth
1973

ACTION
is assigned to

EUR

Dear Mr. Secretary,

At the instance of the Polish Ambassador to the United States I plan to arrive in Warsaw on October 27. The Polish Government has expressed the wish to send their opera to Wolf Trap in 1976 as a gesture of friendship and interest in the Bicentennial.

I shall later be in Rome for an audience with the Pope arranged by Cardinal Raimondi relative to the latter's interest in sending the Sixtine Choir to Wolf Trap in 1976. This choir has never left the Vatican and we at Wolf Trap are delighted at the possibility.

I shall also be in Paris, Munich, Rome, Florence and London.

Wolf Trap as you may know is under the
Department of the Interior.

I will greatly appreciate it if your office
would advise our Ambassadors and Consulate Generals
of my intended visits.

With regard and appreciation,

Itinerary enclosed

The Honorable Henry A. Kissinger
Secretary of State
Department of State
Washington, D. C.

019807

1624 Trap Road, Vienna, Virginia 22180 • (703) 938-3804
WOLF TRAP FARM PARK, CREATED BY ACT OF CONGRESS, 1966 • ADMINISTERED BY THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

1973 ITINERARY MRS. JOUETT SHOUSE

October 22 Leave Dulles - Air France 4:15 p.m.

October 23 Due Paris - Orly 7:00 a.m.
Address: c/o Princess Kotchoubey de Beauharnais
134 rue de Bac VII
Telephone 222 63-65

October 26 Leave Paris - 11:00 a.m.
Due Warsaw - 13:10 p.m.
Address: Hotel Europejski

October 28 Leave Warsaw - 13:25 (1:00 p.m.)
Due Munchen - 15:00 (4:7 p.m.)
Address: Bayerischer Hof, 6 Promenade Plata
Telephone 22887

November 1 Leave Munchen
Due Paris
Address: c/o Princess Kotchoubey de Beauharnais
134 rue de Bac VII, Telephone 222 63-65

November 5 Leave Paris (time not determined)
Due Rome
Address: Hotel Ambassador

November 7 Leave Rome
Due Florence
Address: Hotel Excelsior Italie, 3 Piazza Ognissanti
Telephone 294301

November 9 Due Milano - Hotel Duomo
Telephone 8833

November 16 Milano to London, c/o Colonel John Miller
Crown Equerry's House
Buckingham Palace S.W. 1
Telephone:

December 4 London to Paris - c/o Princess Kotchoubey de Beauharnais
134 rue de Bac VII
Telephone 222 63-65

December 8 Return to Washington

Telephone 222 63-62
134 rue de Bac VII

December 4 London to Paris - c/o Princess Kotchonpey de Beauparnsia

Telephone:
Buckingham Palace 2.W. 1
Crown Encherry's House

Telephone 8333

November 9 Due Milano - Hotel Dromo

Telephone 2364301

Address: Hotel Excelator Italia, 3 Piazza Ogliassanti
Due Florence

November 7 Leave Rome

Address: Hotel Vmpasaador
Due Rome

November 3 Leave Paris (time not determined)

134 rue de Bac VII, Telephone 222 63-62
Address: c/o Princess Kotchonpey de Beauparnsia
Due Paris

November 1 Leave Munchen

Telephone 23887

Address: Bayerischer Hof, 6 Promenade Plata
Due Munchen - 12:00 (4:3 b.m.)

October 28 Leave Warasw - 13:32 (1:00 b.m.)

Address: Hotel Eurobejaki
Due Warasw - 13:10 b.m.

October 22 Leave Duffies - Air France 4:12 b.m.

1933 ITINERARY MRS. JOUETT HOUSE