Neither Snow Nor Rain...

According to a report on NECN over 900 million pieces of mail will go out today through the United States Postal Service. Isn’t that 90% of a billion??? Yoiks! Today we had our fair share of mail delivered to our home. We received 15 pieces of mail, two of which were holiday cards (Yay!), two were things we had asked for and the rest was mostly ho-hum and third class mail, which needed our attention before shredding and recycling. But just because we were happy to see little more than 25% of what arrived, it was still all delivered to our mailbox by our letter carrier in remarkably good order, from all around the country. I unsuccessfully tried to find the quote, but I remember hearing that the amount of mail we receive has grown dramatically over the years. Something like the number of pieces of mail received in a year in 1900 was the same as during a month in 1950 and in a day in 2000. (I Googled and Wiki’d for it in vain. Any facts to share?)

I also have heard that despite continuing increases in our postal rates, the U.S. still has the least expensive and most reliable mail service on the planet. I found a Christian Science Monitor article from 2002 which spells this out quite clearly.

So remember to say please and thank you and a cheerful Happy Holidays to all the postal workers who continue to live up to their unofficial motto: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”. Especially, a dear member of our extended family, who's a really great guy! :-)