What about people who don't answer their mail, even email? It goes beyond rudeness; it's not even good business and oh, the ill-will a non-reply generates! I was trained early on to enclose an SSAE (stamped, self-addressed envelope) or an SSAPC (stamped, self-addressed postcard) to assure me that my message (often a manuscript, more usually a query) had arrived safely - ever conscious of the mail-eating mailboxes. But even with the stamp and the address already written out, the recipients or their assistants seemed to have trouble finding the mailbox. Maybe they knew something I didn't know. So after a while I'd send something inquiring as to the whereabouts of my query, with another stamp. Still nothing. I wrote one a.d. at a theatre saying if I'd known they were that short of funds I'd have sent more stamps. This one had the courtesy and humour to write back saying he had torn the stamp off my postcard and written his grandmother. But he didn't comment on my submission. After several attempts to rouse a response from another director, I actually met him at a post-production party i attended with one of the actors in his show. When I was introduced to the guy I handed him a stamp (I had some in my purse), and identified myself further. He had the grace to look abashed (not many people can do that) but he still didn't write and he didn't accept my play, either. Several agents have told me that Canadian theatres are the worst of all in their ignoring of playwrights and their agents. If it weren't for the grants, they would ignore us completely. As it is, most Canadian theatres (well, not the theatres, you know, but the directors, dramaturges et. al) - most of them wish we were American, Shakespeare or dead. I digress. This is a rant, and it's supposed to be a requiem for the dying post office. Some people won't even know it's gone.

It's not only the recipients of mail who will suffer when the post office is shut down.. For years (again, this is not a new problem; it's just accelerated), for years I have felt sorry for postmen, postwomen, the mail deliverers, walkers all, with sore feet and aching backs. It's a secret not often divulged, but every once in a while one of them would go mad and start hiding letters in the closet or throwing them in a nearby river - this is an alternative to a time/warp machine more easily accessible to postpersons. Anyway, that's a method frowned upon by postal authorities. Is it better to eliminate the post office altogether? Apparently they think so, whoever they are. Well, also anyway, that was another reason I kept on writing snail mail letters, to reassure postpeople that they were an essential part of my/our life. Oh, look, a day without mail is like a day without sunshine. I'm so old I can remember when there was mail delivery on Saturday and I still resent there not being, especially when I visit my daughter in Boston and she gets mail on Saturday. I'll tell you who else is going to be impacted by the disappearance of the post office: greeting card makers (and writers); stationery purveyors (and artists); an entire section of our consumer society erased. I've been buying my better Hasti-Notes (odious term) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art store, really lovely cards called "embellished" and are they ever. But there, you see? I admit I order them online but they do have to be delivered. No aching feet or sore backs now. The future belongs to UPS.