12/27/11 AND IT WON'T BE OPEN THE MONDAY AFTER NEW YEAR'S DAY, EITHER

TODAY IS A TOSS-UP

Tuesday, 8:00 AM.  25 degrees, wind WNW, blustery at times, making for a rather chilly morning walk.  The sky is mostly overcast with ominous black clouds, particularly in the east.  The barometer predicts partly cloudy skies.  The day is a toss-up.
    Yesterday was unseasonably warm, and very windy, with often gale force winds from the south-southwest. The whitecaps were clearly visible from the porch, and the ferry boats were engulfed in spray as they headed into the wind toward Madeline Island. I may be mistaken, but it appeared the ferry even stopped running for a while, as I saw none for several hours in the afternoon.
    Commentary: I was rather taken aback when I found the post office closed yesterday.   The sign was posted all week on the door but for some reason it didn’t register.  I guess I just couldn’t accept that the post office would be closed the day after Christmas.  So, I missed my paper as well as the rest of the daily mail, and I had to send a package by FED EX rather than through the mail.  The post office is already notorious for poor service, and stubbornly insisting on being closed even one day during the Holiday Season bespeaks of management that does not respect its obligation to serve its customers.  “Neither snow, nor heat, nor rain, nor dead of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” But Christmas will.
Now, the excuse from both the union and management is that the Monday after a holiday was made a day off (and therefore shuts down the entire enterprise) in lieu of a pay raise.  That excuse only makes both equally culpable.
In the past I may have waxed sentimental about the Postal Service, as I spent several  Christmas holidays delivering mail during my college years. Indeed, it did do its job in the past.  However, today it does not, and the Postal Service is now supposedly a private or at least semi-private enterprise.  If so, let it go bankrupt and sell it to the highest bidder, or break it into its component parts and sell off those (such as package delivery and logistical components) that do not function satisfactorily and keep only the parts most essential to public service,  such as city home delivery and RFD, admit they are money losers and subsidize them.  At present the Postal Service is neither fish nor fowl, can neither swim nor fly, metaphorically speaking.  And it won’t be open the Monday after New Year’s Day, either.