Mailing It In
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History July 27 - August 2.
It’s been a weird month when it comes to the mail coming to our house. Every day, magazine subscriptions, fliers, coupons, and people begging us to sell our house are faithfully delivered by our wonderful mailman, whose name I have never bothered to ask, and whose presence ever annoys Blue.
I’m a big fan of the United States Postal Service. Always have been. My work requires mailing a lot of pieces – from donation requests to handwritten thank you notes. As I shared a while ago, I love writing letters and once spent an entire summer in college writing to a bunch of friends. Thanks to the postman and postlady of the USPS, that summer was especially memorable.
But recently, I have received one piece of mail four times. It’s not for Anonymous or me, but for a couple that lives in Washington, Missouri.
The weird thing is that the people mailing the letter are also from Washington, Missouri. How it ended up in the nation’s capital is anyone’s guess, if you want to spend time guessing about where misdirected mail comes from.
When I got this mail the first time, I simply dropped it back into the mailbox around the corner.
Then it came back. At first, I thought I hadn’t actually mailed it the first time, so I immediately put it back in the same neighborhood mailbox.
A few weeks went by…
And the letter came back!
At this point, I was getting a chuckle out of this. The first thing you notice is that the house number of the street is the same as ours, and the fact that the word “Washington” appears on it twice – both for the name of the city and the street. So I presumed this is why the letter or whatever it is kept showing up at our place.
After this third time, I decided to be helpful, so I highlighted the city, state, and zip code, thinking that the postpeople would see it. I even added a note not to mail it to my house anymore and put a smiley face on it, because I didn’t want to upset the people who made the term “postal” infamous.
So I proudly dropped it in the mailbox one more time, and wouldn’t you believe it, three days later it came back, and not only that, it was the first piece of mail I saw when I opened my box.
Now I think I must have done something horrible to the USPS because this piece of mail is haunting me. I’ve had a few stalkers in my day, and this letter is easily joining the ranks of the unhealthy obsession with me. Fortunately, after complaining about the situation to coworkers, one explained that the lower left-hand side of the letter has been scanned and imprinted with my ZIP code and street so that it will come to my house forever unless I scratched it out. So it was scanned wrong the very first time it hit the post office. Why? Who knows. It looks like it was dropped in the mail before Memorial Day in Missouri.
So I marked it up one last time, hoping that when they scan it, they will notice they need to fix it, and the lovely couple will finally get their piece of mail.
Godspeed, random piece of mail. Like past stalkers, I never want to see you again.
Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.
1. Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta took place on July 27, 1996. Centennial Park was built specifically by the Olympic committee charged to host the 1996 Summer Games. The 22-acre property hosted concerts, medal ceremonies, and various events for sponsors. After the end of one late concert, security guard Richard Jewell discovered a pipe bomb planted at the base of the sound system. He alerted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and a team of agents, security members, and Jewell himself began evacuating the area. The bomb went off during the middle of it, killing one person and injuring over 100 more.
Jewell was lauded as a hero, and then almost immediately became the leading suspect. The 24-hour news media did what the 24-hour news cycle does well – repeated lies about Jewell and projected him as a mysterious guy because he didn’t keep a job as a banker for 15 years or whatever.
He was never officially charged, just intensely investigated by the FBI, who searched his home twice and kept him under 24-hour surveillance, maintaining the theme of 24 hours of harassing this man who saved hundreds of lives.
It wouldn’t be until years later that the terrorist who committed this vicious act was identified, caught, tried, convicted, and is now sitting in a high maximum security prison in Colorado. Jewell passed away in 2007 due to complications from Type -2 diabetes.
2. “In God We Trust” was signed into law as the official U.S. motto on July 30, 1956. Psalm 115:9-11 tells Israel to “Trust in the Lord” repeatedly. This biblical verse is the foundation of the idea that America needs to place “Our Trust in God” – a statement that was promoted sparsely around the Revolutionary War. Fast forward to 1861, when a Protestant pastor wrote the Treasury Department imploring Secretary Chase to place God’s name on our coins, and therefore save the country, because God really loves the Union. This was partly in response to the Confederates who recently explicitly referred to “Almighty God” and his love for the CSA in their silly little constitution.
Then the term “In God We Trust” spread like wildfire. We trusted God so much that I’m certain The Man Upstairs asked us to tone it down. Then in 1956, both Houses of Congress passed a joint resolution without debate that “In God We Trust” would become the country’s official motto.
3. Music Television launched on August 1, 1981. At 12:01, MTV began to play the first music video, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles, launching a genre of entertainment exclusively focused on music. Formatted much like a radio station, the network featured “video disk jockeys” who gave music personalities stories, conducted interviews, and generally made music even more entertaining. Then MTV branched out into various other programming and established the “reality television” concept, which is now its primary product. MTV is no longer a global music-focused network, shutting down music-specific channel operations outside of the United States at the end of 2025. Here in America, you can find one hour of programming dedicated to the music video that made the place a cultural icon.
When looking up information on the USPS, I noticed that it turned 55 earlier this month. How can the Postal Service only be 55 – didn’t we have this since the founding?
The answer is yes – we have had a Post Office system since the founding of the country. Delivering the mail was an essential operation at the time – getting information out into the land of the people. Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General, and the position was a separate department, like Treasury or Commerce. This meant the head of the post office was cabinet-level until 1971, when the Postal Reorganization Act was passed and signed into law by President Richard Nixon, making it an independent agency under the executive branch.
Today, the USPS is run by David Steiner, who previously served as CEO of Waste Management, which helped him secure corporate board seats on companies like FedEx.
Although Steiner rejected the idea that the postal service should be privatized, he once worked for one of its biggest privatized competitors.
It’s interesting to learn how Amazon, UPS, and FedEx use the USPS infrastructure and governmental mandate to serve areas that wouldn’t be economically viable for them – while piggybacking on USPS service capabilities to build out their own and ultimately take it over.
I’m very concerned that one day Jeff Bezos and his behemoth Amazon, already the number one parcel delivery service in the country, will have the capacity to control the mail.
Just think of what we end up being delivered to my house in the future.
Okay! August is coming up – how about that. Summer is practically coming to an end.
Just kidding. We need to hang onto summer with both hands at this point.
Also, in case you missed it over the weekend, I dropped another ranking of the vice presidents for you to read. I hope you enjoy it! I’ll try to keep this momentum.
Have a great week – hope to see you again this weekend. Thanks for your continued support.
Okay,
Chris
