Tag: USPS

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”.

Impersonal Delivery

Why does Amazon ask for “packaging feedback”?  Do they really want my opinion on a plain brown box?  Yesterday I came home to an Amazon delivery on my front door step.  But that’s already not true.  The box was dropped into a plastic bag and suspended from my mailbox (“front door step” just sounded better).  My packaging feedback to Amazon: lackluster.

40 - jejune

Let’s chat about delivery as it used to be.  My fondest childhood memories include the noisy, colorful, “old-fashioned” delivery trucks that made their way into the neighborhood regularly.  No kid from that era will ever forget the bakery, dairy, and ice cream trucks, and the allure of fresh-made bread and other goodies – temptations limited only by Mom’s permission or the amount of change in your pants pocket.

Growing up in Los Angeles, the Helms Bakery had a fleet of hundreds of bright yellow delivery trucks.  The drivers dressed in smart uniforms and used a distinctive “toot-toot” horn to announce their arrival.  The neighborhood gathering at the truck was as much social as it was for baked goods.  At the end of grade-school field trips through the Helms factory, each kid received a coupon for something free from the delivery truck.  It was like a golden ticket to a candy store, where you walk in and the owner spreads his arms and says “pick one”.

The dairy truck came from Edgemar Farms, not that we ever knew (or cared) where the farm was.  Edgemar delivered milk in glass bottles with foil caps.  The “milkman” would walk into the kitchen like he was family.  He’d take the order from Mom and return with his wire basket full of milk, eggs, and butter.  Then he’d unload everything right into the refrigerator, tip his cap with a cheery “good morning” and be on his way.  Now that’s anything but lackluster delivery.

Ice cream (Good Humor or some other brand) appeared in our neighborhood on summer nights – the very best truck of them all.  I can still hear the beckoning jingle from the roof-mounted loudspeakers.  The neighborhood kids would flock – I mean flock – to the truck’s side window, where the all-in-white ice-cream man would lean out and wait too patiently while we made up our minds.  Bomb pops.  Push-ups.  Ice cream sandwiches.  Heaven on earth delivered right into your hands.

Okay – end of time-gone-by chat – back to today’s delivery by Amazon.  Boring brown box.  Got it?  So how did my box get to me?  What did the truck look like (was it even a truck)?  Did the delivery person wear a uniform? Did he or she come to the front door?

Lack of delivery details equals lackluster delivery.  And it’s only going to get worse.  Amazon Prime Air is described as “a future delivery system designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using small unmanned aerial vehicles”.  So now my brown boxes are going to arrive by parachute.  In my packaging feedback, I’m going to request a beckoning jingle from the drones to announce their arrival – er, landing?