© 2009 - Julie Sherman




Gloom of Night for the Postal Service

Some have memorized it.  The rest of us would like to.  "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."  It was never an official Post Office creed but it's how we want to feel about our mail, which is in jeopardy now.  Pressing financial need impelled the Post Office to raise rates again this past spring.  Unfortunately that will tether people even more tightly to email, making the price increase counterproductive.

Let's face it, we all like mail.  The mailman is a welcome visitor.  Home from work, we promptly check the mail.  We're not actually expecting letters or checks; we just hope the daily mail will bring something that makes us feel good.  We also like stamps.  It's a pleasure, if a small one, to stick

To help save the mail, a good first step might be to correct our misconception that postage is expensive.  A letter travels, maybe thousands of miles, securely and protected from bad weather, reliably arriving in good condition at its proper destination.  The trip involves fuel expense, wear and tear on vehicles, paid services of postal staff and other resources.  Who else could do that for the new rate of 44 cents?  Still, letters are yesterday's income source for the postal service. 

Parcel service might help the agency return to black ink.  Because of its unparalelled institutional knowledge of delivering mail and packages, the postal service is well positioned to become the top provider of package delivery, with second-to-none tracking capability.  Right now, however, the post office cannot really tell us where a package is that should have arrived on Wednesday.  Federal Express can do that.

The post office is now turning to Congress and no wonder.  Any agency with a $2.8 billion shortfall for a year cannot live on hope that people will revert en masse to handwritten letters.  It is hard to see how the postal service, and our mail, can continue without a taxpayer subsidy.  Never mind the government's cavalier appropriation of $700 billion in taxpayer money for institutions that so clearly deserved to fail and have not done for Americans what a letter from my 90-year old friend does for me.

Saturday delivery should probably be eliminated as proposed.  The savings would be considerable.  For any other government department, Monday to Friday operations are standard.  Taking this step might also inspire those of us who cherish traditional mail to step up to the plate and use the postal service instead of seizing on every alternative to it that comes along.  For over 200 years the postal service has been safely delivering letters, valentines, proposals, apologies, invitations, business contracts, checks, vacation postcards, magazines, holiday packages and more.  The concept of Giving Back springs to mind.  No one should even think about sending holiday greetings by any method other than mail.  Unless you're extraordinarily popular, the joy of seeing a couple of dozen red and green envelopes in your mailbox between Thanksgiving and the New Year depends largely on your sending out the same approximate number.

On the grand building that houses the Post Office and Postal Museum in Washington, DC, are engraved these words about the meaning of mail to a nation's people:

"Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Bond of the Scattered Family
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Enlarger of the Common Life"

Any institution that does all that is worth saving.

(orginally published, with minor differences, in the Journal Inquirer (CT) 2009)