"Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep the postmen from their appointed rounds.” – Unofficial motto of the US Postal Service
The actual saying is "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds". This was said about 2500 years ago by the Greek historian, Herodotus. He said this adage during the war between the Greeks and Persians about 500 B.C. in reference to the Persian mounted postal couriers whom he observed and held in high esteem.
Back in 1897 it was the idea of Michaell Kindal, who was one of the architects of the federal post office in New York city to engrave this saying around the top of the building, and the saying kind of stuck.
Today the USPS is a former shadow of what it was 50 years ago, when it was the only way to write to someone other than sending a telegram.
I remember, as a child, back in the dark ages, during the Christmas holiday, that we’d have two mail deliveries a day to accommodate the huge volumes of greeting cards and packages that swamped the service every year.
It was somewhat of a competition as to who would receive the most cards. As I recall, every year we’d send out hundreds of cards, most of which were people whom my father worked with, that were starred on a mimeographed employee list. In return we’d also receive back hundreds of cards that covered every unadorned space in our living room.
Today I seldom receive three or four. Even one friend who’d write a Holiday letter enclosed in her card didn’t send one last year. She admitted to me that she’d been doing it for over 40 years and felt that was enough.
Much to the chagrin of the USPS many others have followed suit as last year they had nine billion less pieces of mail than the year before. That’s about a four percent decrease. And they project a six billion dollar deficit this year. That’s a lot of forty-two cent stamps.
The decline of people using the postal service is obvious, but I’ll say it anyway. We use our email to send notes and birthday greetings, and any other thing we can think up, rather than using snail mail. I personally have an AOL address, Yahoo address and a gmail address, plus I can be reached through my Facebook page or you can even leave a note on this blog, for everyone to see.
In the late 1990’s someone at the post office came up with the bright idea that everyone should pay five cents to them (the USPS) every time we sent an email. Hey, I’m not making this up! And we wonder why the postal system is in such trouble with people like that in high places coming up with half baked schemes like that to save the USPS.
Clearly since the advent of email and the ability to pay bills online, there’s just less and less reasons to put a stamp on an envelope. And alas, we’ll soon not be able to use the old adage that “the check is in the mail"!
