"It will all be clear, if I wake up and you're still here with me in the morning." - The Postal Service, Be Still My Heart (Nobody Remix)
The kind of service I get from USPS:
- My mail finds me even though I've moved a few times over the last 7 years.
- I can send things to people for less than a dollar most of the time and it usually arrives in a couple days.
- We get all kinds of packages delivered to the house and 99% of the time they arrive uninjured and right on time.
- There's a post office everywhere I need one to be. Right now, there's one walking distance from my house (as in less than a block) and there's one walking distance from my office. But, better than that, there's another one halfway between my house and my office as well as mailboxes just about everywhere I need them to be. It's like Disneyland where there's always a trash can right where and when I need one.
This is the kind of service I get from Federal Express:
This is a gift from a friend sent via Fed Ex by another friend who is our favorite clay thrower. It was packed well in paper, and bubble wrap in a box filled with packing peanuts. If this had been delivered by our neighborhood postal worker, he or she would've known to put it on the window sill outside our kitchen. It's well hidden from the street by a large bush and our packages remain there even when we've been away from the house for more than 24 hours. Or, because we aren't a high crime area and have lots of lookie loo neighbors on this street, you can even leave large boxes at the front door.
The Fed Ex person must not have known this. They decided, instead, to toss it over our side gate, an over 6 foot tall wooden door, to the concrete walkway below and leave a note. When I saw the note, I wondered how the Fed Ex person had gotten the box behind the door. Then when I opened the lock and saw the box I was filled with dread. Unless it was something soft or something sturdy, it was going to be broken.
And, well, you see.
Why is this important? Because the Postal Service is said to be on the verge of collapse.
Read that again. An institution older than our constitution could close this winter if Congress doesn't act.
When others talk about our "bloated, do-nothing" government, I often think of the Postal Service. It is one of the most effective services we have in our daily lives. So effective even, that we hardly think about it. It's a service, one that every American (even those without an address) take advantage of. It's a service that takes incredible care of it's workers (to the point that it actually accidentally overpays them) and one that has no mandate to make a profit. No mandate to be a vicious business. It only has to do this: send and deliver mail to every American, no matter where they are, in all conditions, whenever possible.
As Allison Kilkenny points out in this article (h/t Maurice Cherry):
UPS and FedEx aren’t required to do what the Postal Service does and that is deliver the mail to every place, even if the recipient is located in hard-to-reach rural terrain, or an inner-city neighborhood deemed too “dangerous” for other services, like taxi cabs, in which to travel. If the USPS falls, it will be another strike in the class war where poor people are yet again cut off from a service that used to belong to everyone.
So, Congress, do something you haven't done much of this session: Act. Do something for a part of our government that works but don't screw it up. Don't change it's mandate. Don't pretend it's a corporation. Don't forget that it serves the people. All of us. Even the ones who don't vote for you. Even the ones who don't live in your district. Even the ones whom you might forget (or hope to forget) exist.
Do something that stems this tide of backwardsness we've been on this past decade. Or maybe you just like boxes filled with shards of broken promises.
*Thanks for the thought and the hard work, Sho and Cheryl. We appreciate it greatly even if it didn't make it here whole.