Remember Letters and Those Who Deliver Them

Back when I was in my early twenties, long before pocket distraction rectangles, when all was analogue, we spent lots of time waiting around, chatting with whoever was nearby, and staring off into space thinking about things.

One day I was in New York City on 8th Ave between 31st and 33rd Streets in front of Penn Station between modes of public transport going from here to there looking west at the impressive and beautiful James A. Farley Post Office Building now the Moynihan Train Hall. I read the words written across the top.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

I was so hypnotized by the building, the location, and the sentence itself that I ended up memorizing it. Admittedly I was sensitized by a lifelong love of letters, of sending and receiving them. It is one of the many things, like fabric or books, that we don't appreciate how incredible they are, in part because we are so used to them.

Sending and receiving letters used to be a thing, a way that you could spend a bit of time to communicate in a physically manifested way that would last for a long time. Letters would often bring forth tears when received and more tears when found decades later in shoe boxes in attics.

Just the fact of spending the time and modest expense to write one and send it illustrated a sacrifice. The bleak current term is "friction". But that friction wasn't simple inconvenience to be solved by better software; it was a way to tell another person far away that you were thinking about them and would show that care by writing a letter. Same deal when you received one. It was glorious, satisfying, beautiful. I miss the joy of receiving a letter and the giddy anticipation of opening one.

That sentence on the building I memorized was put there in 1914 by the architect McKim, Mead & White. It was adapted from Herodotus who was talking about the postal service of Persia. When Skidmore, Owings & Merrill turned it into the Moynihan Train Hall a few years back, they kept it there, which I so so appreciate.

I have always secretly wanted to be a postal worker and deliver mail. Yea, sure, some agressive dogs and all, but what a great job. There is a start and end time, probably good benefits, you learn so much about a neighborhood, walking around at least in theory delivering letters, although now the postal system is almost entirely for bills and ads. But still.

The US Postal Service delivers almost half a billion pieces of mail each day. It started before the United States, in 1775 when Ben Franklin was the first Postmaster General and really upped its game operationally, timing deliveries etc, in fact the first real systems analysis I know of.

Plenty of neoliberal hyper-capitalist types hate the post office; the Republican Party has been trying to destroy it for decades. They hate how equalizing it is, that every town has a post office with equal access for all; everybody has to wait in line. But I love the post office, specifically for its equality. Lucky thing it's in the US Constitution, or it would be long gone.

Today is National Postal Worker Day in the US, so if you see somebody delivering mail, say thank you.

And if you really want to go crazy, find some paper and an envelope, go buy some stamps, and send a letter to somebody you care about. They will really appreciate it, it will be the first one they'll have gotten in years.

I can't think of a better illustration of what we're all here for.

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If you re-post this, thanks tons. Please do it with #SendAletter, so we can find it.