A word to the rest of the country about mail service down south

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." —Herodotus, 484 B.C. – 430 B.C.

The U.S. Postal Service has taken this quotation as its motto, inscribing it on the New York City Post Office. But I guess the USPS draws the line at monster hurricanes and cataclysms.¹ When Katrina hit, mail service in and out of New Orleans stopped, and stayed stopped for more than a solid month. In October, trickles of mail started to get through. But delay persists. For instance, yesterday I received from my mortgage company a statement dated August 30—a two-month delay. My wife has likewise just received the August issues of some magazines she subscribes to.

This isn't a complaint; I know that the USPS folks are dealing with the same obstacles as the rest of us in New Orleans and on the Mississippi gulf coast. Rather, this is a message to folks in the rest of the country who sent mail to or expect mail from the affected area: Be patient. Things that we've taken for granted all our lives, such as regular mail delivery, just don't work the way they used to.
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¹Lesson learned five minutes ago: "cataclysmic flood" is redundant; a cataclysm is, by definition (OED), "a great and general flood of water ...."

Comments

[Bag Lady]

Just FYI--at work, we ended up holding 701 copies of our September magazine and 500+ of the October issue because the Post Office said it couldn't deliver to a number of Gulf Coast zip codes, especially in and around N.O. (It automatically flagged the problem codes for the mailing house, and the addresses were pulled from the mailing label file.)

So we know who didn't get their magazines, but it's a bit trickier to figure out when people are able to receive post again. As we receive address changes (temporary offices, etc.) and members call and ask where their mags are, we are able to send them on.

That was something about magazine circulation that I had never before encountered, let alone pondered.