Thursday, November 19, 2009

A red letter day

For the past year, there have been rumors that the United States Postal Service may cancel its Saturday service. I know, I'm not sure I can cope with this type of change either.

We all know the USPS is strapped for cash. They've been competing not only with package delivery firms like FedEx and UPS, they also have to deal with e-mail and digital media. So the once-proud mail service has been marginalized.

Or has it?

Have you stopped to think what the mail service actually does every day? This much-maligned institution collects my from your house. For the price of one stamp (which has definitely become more expensive in recent years), postal workers take it to a nearby location, sort it, put it on airplanes and then deliver it to the addressee within three days. That's amazing. My daughter and I read the Little House on the Prairie series recently. In The Long Hard Winter, the Ingalls received mail once all winter long. For those of you who have forgotten, that winter lasted seven months. And we complain about three days.

I think there are times we forget just how much we have to be thankful for. So in the spirit of the holidays, I wanted to say thank you to the USPS. They may not do the job as efficiently as we'd always like, but they still do a pretty darn good job.

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