On Letter Writing and the USPS

For some years the United States Postal Service has been the whipping boy of conservative and libertarian politicians and commentators because the Postal Service, does not only not make money through its postal fees, but because it loses money. Said Solons suggest that the USPS be either disestablished and the delivery of First Class mail be taken over by private firms along the lines of UPS or Federal Express, or that private companies be allowed to compete with the Postal Service. They will even go so far as to say that First Class Mail is outdated and has been replaced by e-mail and on line payment of bills.
Unfortunately, the check of the mail box for many of us results in junk mail, bills and magazines. Perhaps we may receive a card or two at Christmas, on our birthday or Valentine's Day. Very rarely do we receive a letter from a friend, a postcard from a relative vacationing in the Bahamas or a tome from one's grade school teacher expressing what a pleasure it was to teach one despite the fact that one remembers one's self as being an awful brat.
Instead we punch on the computer and check our e-mails for personal messages and then delete them after a while.
All these things are all rather sad. It's sad that the USPS has become a joke for unimaginative comedians and cheap shot pols when one remembers that the United States Post Office was set up by Benjamin Franklin and was for many years a department of the government. The Post Office was considered so important and the mail so sacrosanct that to interfere with the delivery of the mail was a Federal crime. The delivery of the mail was a service that was expected by the citizen to be performed by a federal agency. Now there are voices calling for the delivery of the mail to be performed by private firms with no guarantee that said mail will be delivered or tracked. And as far as cost and convenience is concerned, this writer has sent packages via both the Postal Service and United Parcel Service and he has found the USPS much easier to deal with, and cheaper, than UPS.
And one wonders, if there were competition for the USPS one's mail would be delivered to one's house into one's mailbox. Not to mention the matter of stamps or where to post letters. From how many companies would one have to buy stamps and where would one post them?
All of the above is written with the understanding that the writer is not an employee of the United States Postal Service. But he posits that the main reason that the Postal Service has declined is because of us and we are all worse off for it.
Those who have read novels written in the late 18th century, the 19th century and up to the mid 20th century are aware of how important that proper letter writing once was, and who were alive and reasoning in the 1980s remember receiving letters and post cards from friends and relatives. To receive a proper letter from a friend, whether handwritten or typed, was usually a joy that went beyond the receipt of an e-mail. And to tell the truth, it probably still does.
Think of the times back in Regency England when people used to cross write (writing the length of the page and then turning the page ninety degrees and writing over the previous writing) their letters to save money on postage, the letters sent by Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barret Browning, the shoe boxes of letters sent by one's father's or grandfathers squatting in foxholes or trenches in World War One, World War Two, Korea or Vietnam that have been saved and cherished. Can one really cherish an e-mail printed out on a printer? A proper letter, written by hand or a typewriter, placed in an envelope and sent with a stamp on the envelope is to give the recipient a part of one's self. There is, on the paper, the handwriting, even if it's only a signature, part of one's self. One offers one's bad handwriting or bad typing (or good handwriting or good typing) to the recipient in a way that e-mail cannot. E-mail, for personal correspondence, is a fake. It is electrons. It is, no matter how heartfelt, the real deal. It does not have the DNA or a real person.
One wonders if in twenty years there will be books published containing the e-mails that are made up of e-mails from American soldiers in Iraq to their sweethearts.
Writing proper letters on paper with a pen, pencil or typewriter is hard work. It makes the writer slow down and think in a way that e-mail does not. In proper letter writing one doesn't use emoticons, memes or any of most popular e-mail abbreviations like LOL or ROTFL.
E-mails are quick for quick notes to friends, but do they really replace a letter? Imagine receiving an e-mail from a friend vacationing in Japan such as "Am in Japan. Having a great time" instead of a postcard of the NHK Tower saying the same thing. Which would you rather receive?