Fondly posting about the Postal Service

I seldom see such an unromantic notion as that of abolishing the U.S. Postal Service for the sake of budgetary politics. This meme has been going on for ten days since the NYTimes appropriately gave it some Front Page dap. I'm still amazed that so few people have risen to defend this transcendent service. With renewed focus on the act of doing so, I visited our local Post Office this morning to pick up an Express Mail package. I waltzed through the door right at 9am, after dropping Maya at school. There was one car in the parking lot, no one in line, and the woman behind the counter greeted me like an old friend even though I've never seen her before. I'm sure that most of us have far fewer occasions than those around the holidaze when such a trip is required. But the thought of losing the overall cloud of things that make up the Postal Service painfully pinches the sentimental core of my brain. Combine all the retro-yet-still-utilitarian coolness in the world - vinyl records, Polaroid cameras, manual typewriters, knitting, growing your own vegetables, beer making, basically anything you'd ever find at a flea or farmers market - multiply it by 10 and you're less than halfway to the appreciation and loss factor I think we as a Nation would feel if we actually stuck a fork in the souffle that is the mail. Speaking as someone with his own stationary who still revels in the chance to use it, the loss of snail mail would be a crushing blow. I imagine most Americans can find distinct, personal reasons to keep the trucks rolling. I fondly remember the huge but still permissibly-sized old Hudson's Bay Company boxes we used to mail all manner of things all over the country. And those 35 boxes of books weighing in at over half of ton we mailed from San Francisco to Seattle when we moved? Thanks y'all - it was actually cheaper than having it go on a truck with the rest of our stuff. Which is surely part of the problem. Still...I fondly remember and relive the courting of my wife via snail mail letters. Yes, I said "courting" - that's how I roll. Come rain, sleet or gloom of night - let it be so for the foreseeable future.

Until the next page turns...may a barista you've not seen in a few months today have your coffee up on the counter before you even ask for it.