IS ANYTHING REALLY "FOREVER"

This past week my newspaper carried an article about the new price of sending a piece of first-class mail, which is now up to forty-four cents. Forty-four cents! The article shows a picture of some sample stamps with pictures from the Simpson's TV show. The caption goes on to include a sentence stating that "folks who planned ahead and stocked up on Forever Stamps will still be paying the lower rate". When I was growing up I insisted on sending family members Christmas cards that were just FROM ME. I would ask for the stamps to send them out. But that was in the 1950's and the price of stamps was miniscule. There were special stamps for the holiday to go on the cards, some religious and others just jovial showing Santa or toys, or a Christmas tree. I tried to save at least one of them to remember what Christmas was like that year.

As my birthdays began to have higher numbers, so did the stamps. They also began to recognize important events, like the first man in space. People who collected stamps valued these "commemoratives" as they were called. As an adult I began collecting stamps on my own by way of First Day Covers. These not only held a stamp, but an entire page devoted to the subject of it. They were well written and informative, and I regretted having to stop receiving them as the number of children increased!

But getting back to the stamp price increase, I am troubled about what will happen this coming Christmas. I have always made my own cards, both the art and the verbiage. My Christmas card list has had many names on it, and that number has increased as children have grown up and married and gotten their own addresses. This has meant more cards and thus MORE STAMPS! Don't get me wrong: I don't resent mailing out lots of cards to family, friends, and some businesses. But at nearly half a dollar a pop, this could be a costly endeavor. Even at forty-four cents, a list of 10 recipients will cost $ 4.40. Expanding the list to 50 and that equals $22.00 just for the stamps, assuming they don't go higher between now and December. Now add paper, printing, and envelopes, and I'm looking at a big bill just for cards sent within the United States. Because I taught foreign students, some of my cards go farther, e.g. to Canada, Korea, Hong Kong, or New Zealand. Postage to these countries is much higher.

The reasons for this increase, according to the CBS network, are as follows:
"While the increase will bring in added income, the post office continues to struggle financially as more and more lucrative first-class mail is diverted to the Internet, and the recession discourages businesses from sending their usual volume of advertising. The Postal Service, which does not get a taxpayer subsidy for its operations, lost $2.8 billion last year and is already $2.3 billion in the hole just halfway through this year. Postmaster General John Potter has asked Congress for permission to reduce mail delivery to five days a week. The agency is offering early retirement to workers, consolidating excess capacity in mail processing and transportation networks, realigning carrier routes, halting construction of new postal facilities, freezing officer and executive salaries at 2008 pay levels and reducing travel budgets. Even so, the rate increase is unlikely to cover the ongoing losses and the possibility remains that the post office could run out of money before the end of the fiscal year. The post office could have cited extraordinary circumstances and asked the independent Postal Regulatory Commission for larger increases, but officials worried that would only result in a greater decline in mail volume and worse losses. "

One word in the section above is critical to understanding the decline in mail as we knew it: the Internet. When the personal computer went from being an oddity to being ordinary, life changed in major ways. Advertising went from paper to pixel; news changed from day-to-day to minute-to-minute; and even personal communication went from cards and letters to Email. While formal types of messages, like wedding invitations, remain on paper, conversational exchanges are more easily done on computer. People I know-like my daughter-prefer to "text" others using cell phones. My husband showed me how to do that this morning!