Learning How to Care for Vinyl Record Albums

I am from an age when digital technology was non existent. Without the internet, MP3’s, CD’s and whatever is the newest form of holding music for your listening pleasure we managed to assemble a library of our favorite music.
As a pre-teen the newest thing to have was a small 45 record player. I can recall listening to songs like “I’m a Little Teapot” and “How Much is that Doggie in the Window”. Then as a young teen a battery operated 45 record player and am radio in one was the in thing. It was so ‘cool’ to be able to move from my brothers room to mine and take it with me. Many days were spent with that record player spinning the tunes of the time. One record that jumps to mind for me is a song called “The Battle of New Orleans”.

 When I married  I was shocked by the shear number of vinyl albums my husband has when he first showed me his collection. I learned how to handle and store a record album in a whole different way than the Willy Nilly way I did it. I always kept my albums in their covers but I never worried about them piling up. No more piles of record albums were to be in my life. Each time you listened to an album it was wiped with a static free cloth. It was then, carefully put back into the inside insert and slid back into the album cover. I must say it was a learning experience.

I learned how to properly handle a record album and it is an excellent practice. Not one of my husbands albums has a scratch on it. At least I have yet to find one and I have not made one. My own albums are a mess, from ripped covers to skips from deep scratches. Below are some products to help keep your vinyl albums tip top.

As I said earlier to keep your record albums in the best possible condition it is highly recommended that you store them standing up. The storage cabinet in the photo above was made by my husband but if you can’t or don’t want to make your own there are much easier and widely used ways to store your valuable vinyl.

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The Post Office is not broke. Who is Killing the USPS

Hightower Lowdown | The Post Office is not broke–and it hasn’t taken any of our tax money since 1971

I did not know any of this beginning with the fact that the USPS has never taken one cent of taxpayer money.
These are just two excerpts of a great article I read after hearing some of this on a television news program. I believe it was MSNBC. 
“In 2006, the Bush White House and Congress whacked the post office with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act–an incredible piece of ugliness requiring the agency to PRE-PAY the health care benefits not only of current employees, but also of all employees who’ll retire during the next 75 years. Yes, that includes employees who’re not yet born! No other agency and no corporation has to do this. Worse, this ridiculous law demands that USPS fully fund this seven-decade burden by 2016. Imagine the shrieks of outrage if Congress tried to slap FedEx or other private firms with such an onerous requirement. This politically motivated mandate is costing the Postal Service $5.5 billion a year–money taken right out of postage revenue that could be going to services. That’s the real source of the “financial crisis” squeez-ing America’s post offices.”
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” The killers are the outright privatizers who’ve pushed for decades to get the post office out of… well, out of our mailboxes. In the 1960’s, AT&T chairman Fred Kappel headed a presidential commission on postal reform, and he told a congressional panel, “If I could, I’d make the Post Office a private enterprise.” He couldn’t, but he did set down the marker that remains the Holy Grail of the corporate elite. Unsurprisingly, FedEx CEO Fredrick Smith (a former board member of the Koch boys’ Cato Institute) has been the leading corporate champion for, as he put it in 1999, “closing down the USPS.”
Read the entire article