6 Days a Week

The US Postal Service has been talking about this for quite a while now, and this week, they made it official:  no more first class mail delivery on Saturdays as of August 1 of this year.

They say that the majority of people polled in a recent survey said they didn't mind not getting letters on Saturdays.  They didn't ask me.  I would have said that I preferred to keep the same Mon-Sat schedule that we've had since 1863, but then again, they figured that if they had to keep coming to your house and mine on Saturday, they would have to start charging $1.08 per letter to offset the gap in their profit sheets.

Of course, they could also start charging $1.08 for every piece of junk mail that corporations mail out. Every day, I shred all sorts of paper from dubious charities, fly-by-night home remodelers, cheesy carpet steamers, factitious credit card schemes, double-dealing used car salespersons, uxorious  money lenders, hitch-filled sandwich and chicken coupons that make you buy two large drinks in order to get something "free," insincere requests to put my old clothes in an enclosed plastic bag to be left on the porch awaiting a truck that never comes (I still wear my old clothes anyway) and, every couple of years, sham campaign literature containing spurious allegations and purely ornamental promises.

Back in the day, mail was delivered twice a day, six days, and that's why Ben Franklin called his magazine the Saturday Evening Post - it was something to look forward to enjoying while relaxing after a long week. 

Soon, no Saturday post at all, morning or evening.  But look at the bright side:  draft notices, school expulsion letters and speed camera tickets won't show up on Saturdays anymore...three more reasons to have a good weekend!