Rachel Holmes loves old-fashioned letters and postcards. She got a chance to support the carriers who deliver them as a dozen union members, dressed up in Hawaiian shirts, leis, and grass skirts, braved a near-tornado to promote letter and postcard writing.
Here’s the problem: Holmes’s great aunt, who used to write her regular letters, now uses only email.
Here’s another sign of the challenges she faced: To write out her stamped postcard, Holmes (pictured on the right in the photo with letter carrier Donna Rzasa) used a FedEx envelope.
FedEx and email are feared competitors of the U.S. Postal Service, which has seen precipitous drops in patronage, leading to the announced closings of five area neighborhood post offices. The USPS hopes to cut a $6 billion deficit by the end of September.
Thus the raison d’etre of the event Holmes took part in, which was staged at rush hour Friday at the main post office on Brewery Street.
“We’re out here to save careers,” said Vincent J. Mase, the president of branch 19 of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), as he urged people to write letters and to pay their bills in envelopes using stamps.
He said about 420 letter carriers serve New Haven’s zip codes 06510 to 06519. Over the past three years, that’s down by 30 carriers, largely through attrition.
He said other signs do not look good. Volume of first class mail and postcards is down some 20 to 22 percent. Most alarming: a proposal to reduce mail delivery to five days a week is gaining traction in Congress.
“If that ever happens,” Mase said, as fellow union members distributed free post cards, already stamped, and humorous messages, “it would be a fatal move for the postal service and an end to delivery as we know it.”
He suggested firms like FedEx, which currently do not handle first class mail, would jump in and take 25 percent more of the business volume away from the USPS.
The idea for the whimsical event had serious job implications for carriers Carol Christmas of Fair Haven (pictured with 22-year veteran letter carrier Nelson Cruz).
Don’t you want “delivery by a real human being?” Christmas asked as patrons walked into the post office.
“I see the expression on people’s faces when I deliver,” she said. “They’re touched.”
She recalled delivering a letter from a college at the end of an annual acceptance-or-rejection cycle. The recipient was nervous and asked Christmas to open it. As Christmas read, it became clear it was good news. “Then she hugged me.”
Cruz, who delivers mail these days to Farnam Court and areas in Little Italy, elaborated further on the value-added of handwritten communication. Some city elementary schools encourage writing by having kids write to their classmates, “The kids are waiting for me by the mailbox,” Cruz said. “They even call me Mr. Mailbox.”
He said he’s often “the only person [some elderly people] may have contact with all day.”
Postal patron Ed Rodriguez (on the right, with Vincent Mase) said that he had just dropped a letter at the post office. He writes one every few weeks. As to postcards, they appeared to be an increasingly rara avis as an epistolary form. “I haven’t written a postcard,” he said, “in two years.”
Mase, now retired after more than 30 years, pointed out that the postal service had been a career for him. After 10 years he was able to buy a one-family house. He’s put three kids through college. Many carriers, he said, live in or near the communities where they work. He and Cruz suggested the percentage is higher in their profession than, say, among cops or firefighters.
“We want to make people understand,” Mase said, “that buying stamps pays the bills. Using mail will help save careers, and these people live right in your backyard.”
One passerby, taking a lei and a postcard, said sure, she would send it from where she took vacation, but, “Does it have to be Hawaii?” Departing, she gave the carriers a thumbs up.
Mase said the action, which was being staged on the carriers’ own time, was fully supported by the post office management. Lisa Landone, the post office’s customer relations coordinator, and a supporter, came out to take pictures.
“Kids these days,” she said, “are not ever going to know what their mothers and father’s handwriting is like.”
Christmas said the carriers would repeat the event at other venues yet to be determined. “There’s a movement across the country,” she said, “to boot up the handwritten letter.”
It was unclear whether she was aware that she had used the computer lingo even in her endorsement.
