{"id":604,"date":"2013-02-10T12:43:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T12:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/10\/so-long-saturday-mail-delivery"},"modified":"2013-02-10T12:43:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-10T12:43:00","slug":"so-long-saturday-mail-delivery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=604","title":{"rendered":"So long, Saturday mail delivery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Count me as one American who supports the end of Saturday mail delivery to help the U.S. Postal Service stay afloat.<\/p>\n<p>USPS announced its plans to shut down Saturday delivery as a way to save an estimated $2 billion annually. The service has been bleeding money for years. It keeps raising postage rates, which now stand at 46 cents to deliver a first-class letter; in my view, that\u2019s still a pretty good bargain for sending someone a piece of mail across this vast country.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not that I dislike my mail carriers. They do a fine job in our Amarillo neighborhood. On most days you can set your watch to the time they show up with that day\u2019s mail. USPS critics suggest the service ought to use more \u201ccluster boxes\u201d to deliver mail, which would reduce the time it takes to distribute the mail along their routes. We already have that in our \u2018hood. Problem solved here.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, we all know who the villain is in this drama. It\u2019s the Internet, which has sunk its teeth into mail delivery the way it is savaging other business enterprises. <\/p>\n<p>Newspapers come to mind, yes? <\/p>\n<p>Few of us send actual letters any longer \u2026 although I recently did just that in reconnecting with someone with whom I served in Vietnam, and I\u2019m hoping to hear back from him soon. Our mode of messaging our friends and family? Email and \u201csocial media\u201d have taken the place of letters. And let\u2019s not forget how many of us \u2013 including little ol\u2019 us \u2013 pay virtually all of our bills online. <\/p>\n<p>These days, the bulk of our USPS deliveries consist of \u201cjunk mail,\u201d catalogues and other solicitations.<\/p>\n<p>No, I won\u2019t miss Saturday mail delivery when the USPS pulls the plug on it. Getting mail five days each week is good enough.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Count me as one American who supports the end of Saturday mail delivery to help the U.S. Postal Service stay afloat. USPS announced its plans to shut down Saturday delivery as a way to save an estimated $2 billion annually. The service has been bleeding money for years. It keeps raising postage rates, which now &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=604\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">So long, Saturday mail delivery<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}