Postmaster Louis DeJoy, according to Time in 2023, “aims to remake delivery service that deals increasingly less with traditional mail and more with packages.”
“Packages,” we should understand, mean purchases, corporate products, consumer goods. Indeed, regular first-class mail has slowed down under DeJoy, a logistics expert and Donald Trump donor. When my checks aren’t posted by due dates, I have called companies in Newark or Chicago to arrange payment, and strangers there counseled me not to rely on the postal service these days.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” a sentiment from the Greek Herodotus and carved into the Farley post office in New York City, is not, the Postal Service wants made clear, an official motto.
Former U.S. poet laureate Philip Levine, lost in Spain years ago, wrote, “The mail here never leaves or leaves too late.”
