I Love the Post Office

[britwrit]

From the New York Times:

NOT because it still delivers letters — the Alamo of warm and fuzzy Luddites like my mother and multinational credit card corporations.

And not because of stamps. Collectors, may you never give up on the dream of finding that inverted Jenny-plane 24-center at a flea market in Ohio.

And not because it is celebrating National Dog Bite Prevention Week by ranking cities by the number of attacks on postal employees in 2014 (No. 1: Los Angeles, with 74).

Nor is it the workaday architecture of post offices themselves, whether Brutalist concrete or prefab ranch style.

Nor even the small-town half post office, half general stores, with idiosyncratic hours, and bricks of hunter’s Cheddar.

No, this is a paean to the big-city post office, those grimy, chaotic, good-will-draining temples of American bureaucratic dysfunction, where hopes and packages are mangled, and lunch hours are not to be trifled with, and where you can still experience a city in all its magnificent, unfriendly, unruly mess.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opini ... odayspaper