The Postal Service Re-invents Itself.

The US Postal Service, bleeding red ink, has announced plans to close many Detroit area post office branches in the coming months. Indeed, throughout Michigan there will be many closings. There will be community meetings first to hear citizen concerns, but in the end about 1 in 10 post offices will be closed. The Postal Service intends to replace them with mini-centers inside drug stores and the like, where stamps and packets and various other mailing needs will be sold.

The folks we feel the most compassion for are the senior citizens who, perhaps, have never become comfortable in the computer age and prefer direct personal service with their mail. Hopefully they will be comfortable enough with the new setups, which presumably will be in neighborhood business and as accessible as the soon to close post offices. Those who live in more rural areas, the elderly and other postal patrons alike, may face greater difficulties than here in the Detroit Metro area. And, of course, those postal workers losing their jobs will no doubt face trying times. It is right to feel sympathy for all involved.

But for well or for ill, and we believe mostly for well, Postal service is simply waning. With e-mail and online bill paying and the like, there simply isn't the need for paper letters and bills that there once was. That has to seen as a positive, especially by the left, as we use less paper and cardboard. The whole effort is merely a reflection of a society always changing in its practical approach to problems. On the whole, most such changes in our history have been improvements.

Still, we will miss the local post office, the direct personal attention. So it goes; it is a storm we all must weather.