Dead-Letter Danes

Denmark strikes me as a charming little country. It’s only half the size of South Carolina. The central town of Billund (pop. 7,300) is the birthplace of LEGO. The Little Mermaid – the famous waterfront bronze statue – honors the fairy tales of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. And the Viking warriors of Denmark’s past seem like cartoon characters compared to today’s warmongers. Now let’s add another reason to admire the Danes. By the end of 2025 their postal service will no longer deliver the mail.

Imagine walking out to your mailbox, dropping down the little door, and finding… nothing.  Do you really have to imagine it?  I can’t remember the last time my mailbox contained anything worth putting my hands on.  It’s a daily pity-party pile in there: postcard ads, clothing catalogs, and random solicitations addressed to “Resident”.  Christmas, birthday, and occasional thank-you cards are about the only personal touch we’re giving USPS anymore, and I speak as a baby boomer.  The younger generations click keys instead of lick stamps.

Denmark discovered the obvious.  Since Y2K their personal mail volume has dropped 90%.  It’s pretty much the same as removing eleven eggs from the box of twelve.  You used to deliver a dozen but now you deliver just one.  Denmark’s Postal Service has been around for over 400 years so understandably a few of its citizens – seniors in particular – are upset about the quit.  But are they really happy to pay 29 Danish krone (about $4.20) to mail a letter somewhere within their tiny country?  That cost would have me turning to email as well.

Let’s put a “stop” to this

Denmark is already beginning to remove its 1,500 public mailboxes, which got me to thinking.  What will the U.S. do with all of our own mailboxes when our time comes?  We have tons of the free-standing blue ones, where you pull open the door and drop in a letter.  By my (questionable) math, since Denmark is half the size of South Carolina, and South Carolina is only 1% of the U.S. geography, we could have over 300,000 of these dead-weights just taking up space.

And what about the mailbox in front of your house?  Remove it from its stand and then what? Oversized breadbox for the kitchen?  Storage for a stack of small tombstones?  Garage for Mini Cooper?  The odd shape of traditional mailboxes just makes you want to melt them down for scrap.

It’s time for the U.S. to get on board with mighty Denmark and stop delivering the mail.  UPS, FedEx, Amazon and a host of others now command package delivery.  Any bill worth paying can be settled online.  And for every twenty “circulars” my wife likes to leaf through, maybe one catches her eye with something she’d want to buy.

I can’t reconcile the fact that a letter to my niece way out in Hawaii or one to my neighbor right next door costs the same to mail: $0.73 for the first-class stamp.  Maybe it’s why USPS reported a loss of ten billion dollars in 2024 alone.  With that much red, the cost could be 29 krone (or $4.20, remember?) and it still wouldn’t make a profit.  If you ask me, removing that particular debt from the federal budget sounds as sweet as… well… a cinnamon Danish.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #8

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

Christian hymns sometimes refer to “tearing down the walls”.  We were doing anything but tearing down at Notre-Dame de Paris today.  Bags 12, 13, and 14… of 34 bags of pieces, had us beginning to surround the nave (the main space) with walls of stone, glass, and columns galore.  The vertical construction progressed so quickly I swear I heard a parishioner cry, “Let us out!  Let us out!”

Check out all those columns in the first photo.  It’s like an army of soldiers took up residence in the cathedral, bracing themselves like Atlas for the weight of what is soon to be built above them.  It’s a wonder the congregation can move about in the sanctuary without banging into a soldier here or there.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven

Today’s math lesson: multiples of seven.  We built seven of this or fourteen of that, or in the case of those soldier columns, twenty-eight.  And you know those Lazy Susan spinners the cake decorators use for frosting and such?  I could’ve used one today since I built a little on the north wall, then switched to the south wall, then back to the north, and so on.

Cathedral doors forthcoming

It’s a good thing I’m showing you the sanctuary looking down from above (feeling divine?)  As you can see from the west end here – where the bell towers will soon rise – we’re already pretty well buttoned up.  Settle in, all ye faithful; get comfortable.  Those walls will continue to rise up around you.

Running build time: 6 hrs. 50 min.

Total leftover pieces: 26

Some content sourced from the BBC.com article, “Denmark postal service to stop delivering letters”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Unknown's avatar

Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

19 thoughts on “Dead-Letter Danes”

  1. So much of what arrives in my mailbox is moot before it arrives. The grandkids already know their grades online long before the report card arrives. But credit cards and driver’s licenses still need to be delivered.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Some of the U.S. states allow driver’s licenses to be presented digitally, and almost all of us have our credit cards in our phones now. Seems to me it’s only a matter of time before the physical versions of both disappear forever. Not to suggest I’m happy about that. There’s something comforting in having the actual card in hand instead of setting yourself up to be hacked.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Magnificent comment, Andrew. I claim to wonder why my wife enjoys leafing through clothing catalogs, yet I do the exact same thing with a LEGO catalog. The temptation of building another model is delicious.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. At our AZ Community, we don’t have home mail delivery. The post office, (especially at about 2:30 when the mail has finally been sorted and is in the boxes), is the social center of town. It is also where you go to for free oranges, lemons and grapefruit when those are in season. It is the place where people post notices for sundry events and lost pets or other things. For some reason, Amazon uses the post office for certain deliveries. All in all, the post office is an important place in our community.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Your comment brings back a memory from my late father, who also spoke fondly of visits to the post office (his community didn’t have home mail delivery either). He gave the exact same reasons you did to look forward to going. It sounded like a pop-up party for the neighborhood, where you’d run into the same, familiar faces every day. I think it’s great and I hope it continues, even if home delivery does not.

      Like

  5. Our mailbox is a large black one on a white post down by the street, as mandated by the HOA. I like seeing the uniformity of them but also know ours could hold a week’s worth of mail and not even be half full.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It is telling that we leave town for a week or two and no longer put our mail delivery on hold. It’s kind of nostalgic when we return – the mailbox actually looks full.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Mailboxes, another joyful thing that leaves us. I miss getting cards/letters in the mail from friends. ND is looking great. It is amazing, really, how real and impressive it looks, because soon it will be covered. So, what hymns were you playing while building…

    Liked by 1 person

  7. I didn’t know that about Denmark’s mail – I would like that idea Dave. I read today that the USPS asking 10,000 workers to take early retirement which will further stress their retirement pension issue. Since opting out of hard copies of utility and bank/credit card statements, I have way less mail. I used to get a lot of mail order catalogs from items I ordered, but also competitor’s catalogs who misappropriated my mailing address. Then awhile back I learned about “Catalog Choice” which was a free way to get rid of all mail order catalogs, since crossing out my name/address and saying “Moved” and putting it in the mail box did NOT work. It was a new company and you could make a donation to help them get it going, which I did, a one-time donation. I rarely get catalogs now. It’s great.

    I have a standard-sized mailbox and what irks me most is the over-sized postcards, usually from car dealerships that half the time are sticking out of the box as the mail carrier thinks they shouldn’t be folded. They’re junk mail for goodness sake! My mail carrier has an 11-mile route, delivers at my house any time between 9:00 and 3:00 as he likes to vary his route day to day. I often find the lid up and the mail soaked because of over-sized postcards. You can’t cancel “Resident” mailings as I tried.

    You will be done with Notre Dame Cathedral by Easter for sure looking at your progress to date.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Among the bazillion things the Federal government does, one of very few that is explicitly authorized in the Constitution is the creation and operation of a post office. But it doesn’t require that a postal system exist.

    I am trying to remember the last time I got an actual letter in the mail.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Ten billion dollars?! Holy cow! From paying unnecessary employees, maybe? We still go to the USPS to mail packages. Their rates are competitive with the other shipping methods. But, wow, that’s an incredible loss. I wonder why they haven’t been slowly but surely closing locations here and there.

    This: Storage for a stack of small tombstones? Garage for Mini Cooper?–Hilarious!

    Fun to see the cathedral progress!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. In other words, Denmark’s approach works for you (and for me). I don’t need home delivery anymore but I still want to keep (at least some of) the offices open for mailing packages. Then let’s see if we’re still losing $10B/year 😦

      Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.