Dear President Obama #426: “Signed, sealed, delivered...uh...on Monday”

Tom Foreman is an Emmy award-winning journalist who works over at CNN. His work covers a wide-range of topics for the network and he can be seen reporting for programs including Anderson Cooper 360° and The Situation Room.

Mr. Foreman has committed to writing a letter to President Obama every day as long as he is in office. The topics are completely random and there is almost never and agenda to them. This is today's letter. I found it particularly entertaining.

Dear Mr. President,

Did I get this right? I read an article in USA Today which was all about the Post Office maybe giving up entirely on weekend deliveries, and it said the prime opponents of the measure are young Americans. How can this be? I sort of think most people under 30 are not entirely sure what a post office is, so how can they oppose this cutback?

The postal service amazes me. I know that plenty of people have gripes and have made jokes about it over the years, and Cliff Clavin was admittedly a terrific character. But it astounds me to think that I can scribble a note to someone thousands of miles away, stick it into an envelope, slap on a stamp, and for 44-cents have it delivered to the object of my correspondence!

Can you name one other thing that is so cheap and effective? And no cracks about my girlfriends in college, please. Well, ok…e-mail is better, I’ll admit that. But e-mail is still a relatively recent phenomenon and when you and all your political pals finally get around to taxing it (which you will…don’t try to fool me about that!) I suspect it will be word-for word no cheaper and perhaps even more expensive.

I love getting letters. Even these days. Even as I frantically thumb on my BlackBerry, and text on my phone, and flash semaphore messages to the folks on the Virginia side of the river. Letters just have a wonderful permanence about them, which is kind of strange to say considering that they are written on paper. They’re not like Stonehenge, for crying out loud.

Still, I like them and I get a little thrill every time I flip through the day’s stack of mail, and I’ll miss it if Saturday gets taken off of the route, so to speak.

So ponder this a bit, give me a call and let’s chat it over. Maybe we can come up with some clever new plan to offset the costs and keep the Saturday cards and letters coming. Wouldn’t that be something? Or I suppose you could write me a letter…but, uh, hurry.

Regards,

Tom