Trash in Collection Box Photo. Franzen on Chicago Post Office Scandal. The U.S. Postal Service Ends Next-Day Delivery. Christmas has flown, and mail at home this week will produce shiny bargain-sale notices, some bills and invitations, an early thank-you note for a gift, and a late Christmas card or two, but perhaps not an actual letter.
There’s nothing new about this, but a bit of sadness, a pang, has remained since the Postal Service announced, last month, that it will soon drop any promises of next-day delivery for first-class letters. The post office is broke, and the forty per cent of the first-class mail that currently reaches us within a day will now arrive in two, or even three. Two hundred and fifty-two local post offices are being considered for elimination, and only congressional approval is delaying the termination of Saturday mail service. News Desk: The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Postal Service in Fourteen New Yorker Covers. “Every time I come out of Penn Station,” David Macaulay said, “I look at that post office with the wonderful phrase ‘Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds’ ”—the unofficial slogan of the U.S.
Postal Service, derived from a line in Herodotus’ Histories about the ancient Persians’ courier service. “And I just saw these empty spaces at the end of the building and I thought, ‘Well at least they have space to make corrections,’ ” he said. “And that’s the kind of thing that amuses me after a seven-hour train ride from Vermont. Then again, at that point, almost anything does.” Track the rise and fall of the postal service over fourteen New Yorker covers, from 1927 until now, in this slide show. What's Wrong With The Mail, And Other Reading : Planet Money. Post apocalyptic mailman The Perry Bible Fellowship. About.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_0217profitability.pdf. Stamp Vending Machines to Be Eliminated.