i have the postal service in my blood. i am the grandchild of two postmasters (for lack of a genderneutral term that denotes a more prominent position than "postal worker"). my best friend's father is a postmaster. its something i grew up with.

then i ended up on the rez, and somewhere between the politics of standardized testing among native americans and watching the Ladies Man one too many times, the term mail man took on particularly important meaning in my life.

but after a few years of dealing with the jc usps, i lost hope. when the r___ and i changed our address it took over a month for the forwarding to kick in (and monmouth to pavonia is really only 3 or 4 blocks). on top of that, they lost 4 (important) packages over the course of 8 months. at some point i decided i was going to start fed exing instead.

but today, due to no particular conscious action by the usps, the mail service was redeemed. really i have two of my favorite people to thank. in my mailbox, when i got home from school, i found chocolate and music (along with some very nice notes with them). and though the contents of the two envelopes were quite exciting, it was the thinking behind them that really made the difference.

for me at least, there will always be something particularly distinctive and touching about real mail. holding something someone else has touched, that was meant for you. though in some ways, it communicates less than a phonecall or email, in other ways it communicates on a deeper level. i won't start quoting the note accompanying the cd, but its nice to find alternative ways to communicate with people that are important to you. blogging is one thing. sending a piece of yourself in whatever form is better...