February 21st, 2023

There you have it, a mailbox.  Specifically, our mailbox.  It is ordinary and functional and currently still sporting the solar twinkle lights that we dressed it up in around Christmas Time.  At this point, I suspect that the twinkle lights will just be permanent condition.

So, as I was saying, it's an ordinary mailbox and it does ordinary things.    When the mail arrives Monday though Saturday, somewhere between 2:30 and 5:30 pm, I wander on out and collect whatever is in there.  Usually it's a combination of promotions and ads, occasionally mixing things up with a bill or two.  Every once in awhile there is a card of some sort, celebrating Christmas or Birthdays, maybe a card that with Anniversary or Get Well wishes.  Even more rarely it's a "no particular reason" card which is, always, the best reason in the world.

I have come to know the sounds of the mail truck and much like Pavlov's dog, when I hear that sound, I immediately head down the driveway to collect whatever is in the box.  Even though the mail is rarely for me or in anyway fun, I am always a little excited about the possibilities. Even knowing perfectly well that much of the time it's innards go directly to the garbage can or recycle bin, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, I still look forward to retrieving the days' mail.    

But as of this month, there are two days of the week where I am even more excited than usual to bring whatever our mail delivery person has left us.  Why?  Ok here's why:

This was what our mail person left us on the past Saturday:  Two bills, the City of Venice Magazine AND our newspaper.   Our Newspaper?   I find that so very odd!  Our Post office now manages the delivery of the local newspaper:  The Venice Gondolier.  What?

Have you ever even heard of that before?  I suppose it makes sense.  I mean the mail person delivers every day.  Even if there is not so much as a grocery store circular to stuff into our mailbox, our postal lady drives right by the house every day but Sunday.  So why not?  I guess.

There was an article in that very newspaper about a month ago, informing those of us who get an actual newspaper rather than just the online version, that due to the fact that the newspaper is unable to find people wiling to deliver the newspaper anymore,  that task would now be passed along to the US Post  Office.  Wow!  I am so old that I remember when kids delivered the mail!  Kids on foot towing wagons stacked with newspapers that were summarily tossed onto the lawn, into the flower gardens or the driveways of subscribers.  Some kids even had such good throwing arms that they were able to deliver their papers on their bikes!  Wow!  

Our last newspaper person was a full grown adult who delivered the papers from her car.  And that's fine.  She did a good job. The newspaper almost always arrived on time and in the right place!  But now, that too is a thing of the past.  Now the daily newspaper arrives with the daily mail.

I mean, I guess, that is creative problem solving right?  And it's not unprecedented after all.  If I ordered a subscription to an out of state newspaper, that would arrive in our mailbox.  So why not do the same thing with the local paper.  It arrives the same day as it normally would, just at a different time.  Sooooo no biggie.

Other than, I miss having a morning paper.  As it is, we've cut down from a daily paper to a twice a week paper.  We choose to not renew our subscription to the daily news which came out of Tampa, The Herald.  Most of the "news" we were already aware of either via online news, TV news, radio news or, if it was Super Important, we would be alerted through our cellphones.  Also the price kept going up while the quality of writing when down.  Am I the only person, by the way, who is annoyed by the poor, typing/spelling/grammar/punctuation/tense choice/ sentence structure/etc in any print publication anymore?  I find that I spend more time aggravated by those details than actually absorbing the article I am supposedly reading.

I don't mean the occasional booboo.  That's understandable and even expected. I am talking about every single magazine, newspaper, newsletter and online article that I read lately has errors.  Sometimes really big errors, such as getting the name completely wrong of the person about whom the article is written!  ARGH!  Are there no proof readers anymore? Or is the prevailing attitude, "eh, it's close enough, you know what I meant'.   ??     Infuriating.  

At any rate, if I am going to be aggravated while reading the news, not just about the story it self but the actual writing of the story, perhaps it's better if we keep it down to twice a week instead of every day, I suppose.  Which is why we now just get the local paper which, as I said, only publishes twice a week.

Also, if you are going to be stuck reading ads, it's kind of nice to only read local ads.   You know, things that actually directly impact my life and Tim's.    (and everyone else in V

I'm starting to adapt to getting the newspaper later in the day.  Now I am reading it just before starting dinner most  of the time.  Not bad, not bad.  And this week,  I saved Saturday's newspaper to read until Sunday.  That was a treat, reading the Sunday Funnies on SUNDAY just like we used to do in the olden days.

I feel bad for the mail carriers tho. Just one dang more thing for them to have to keep track of.  At least they don't end up having to deliver those gigantic catalogues nowadays.  Remember those?  Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogues were enormous!  And in some places that  I've lived, the mail carriers were on foot, lugging many many pounds of delivery in large leather shoulder bags.  I cannot begin to imagine how heavy those were.  At least here our mail delivery people drive mail trucks!

And in any case, I'm sure either option is certainly better than the really olden days in the west when the mail arrived via pony express tucked inside a saddle bag and carried by a fast moving, fast thinking fella that hoped he wasn't going to be beset by bandits or bad weather, that his horse wouldn't draw up lame, and that he and the mail would arrive in one piece each time he set out to do his route.

My mother's mother grew up on Little Deer Isle off the coast of Maine and their mail arrived by boat, when it finally arrived.  Obviously in bad storms and wicked winter weather whatever boat dropped the mail off was delayed a bit.   When the cod were running or the lobster traps needed to be pulled, whoever piloted that boat was probably running a little late on those days too.  And the mail might be a wee bit damp and smell a might fishy when you finally got it also.

As I think on it, having our newspaper arrive by mail truck is a fine idea.  Don't know why they didn't think of it before ;)