Postal Service Halts Deliveries to Low Mail Slots...bending over 'dangerous'

The postman always rings twice, unless he has to bend down. The U.S. Postal Service (Brooklyn) has stopped delivering mail to some households in Borough Park, claiming the low-set mail slots they’ve been using for decades are dangerous, furious residents said. The change has forced them into hour-long lines at the 51st St. post office to collect the crucial medicines, Social Security checks and letters that used to come right to their door. “Since when do guidelines change?” asked Chumy Orgel. “I’ve been living here 30 years.” The mailboxes are a safety hazard, according to an Aug. 21 letter sent by a postal service customer service manager to residents along 46th St. Necha Altman has lived on the street for 35 years, always getting the mail through a slot near the bottom of her door. She installed new mailboxes on the wall after receiving the letter, but that wasn’t good enough for the carrier, who wanted the boxes at street level to avoid her nine steps, she said...more

What about all this rain & sleet & snow stuff.  I looked it up, and the motto is actually inscribed on a NY City P.O. building!  According to Wikipedia:



An inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York City reads:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.^[1]

This phrase was a translation by Prof. George Herbert Palmer, Harvard University, from an ancient Greek work of Herodotus describing the Persian system of mounted postal carriers c. 500 B.C.E.  It derives from a quote from Herodotus' Histories, referring to the courier service of the ancient Persian Empire:

It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.

—Herodotus, Histories (8.98) (trans. A.D. Godley, 1924)

The gov't has had us "bending over" for a lot longer than 35 years.  But in no way will they even slightly bend to deliver one of those apparently very heavy letters in NY City.

If there was a Pony Express today I'm sure they'd be riding Shetlands.

And what's up with these politicians and the Greeks?  James A. Farley, Democrat party boss, "borrows" from Herodotus for a motto, and Abraham Lincoln, Republican, "borrows" from Pericles for the Gettysburg Address.  A little bipartisan theft for all you fans of bipartisanship.

This does, however, clear up part of an ongoing investigation here at The Westerner.  We have eliminated all Post Office employees from the list of suspects who stole and relocated the BLM signs.