{"id":6017,"date":"2014-03-26T14:46:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T18:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=6017"},"modified":"2014-04-09T14:17:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T18:17:12","slug":"inside-aurora-going-postal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/inside-aurora-going-postal\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE AURORA: Going…Postal"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n

Something unusual happened to me last week; I received a letter in the mail.
\n\u201cHmph \u2013 I get mail all the time\u201d, you probably say.
\nBut this was different.
\nIt wasn\u2019t a form letter. There was no printing, typeface, letterhead, labels or \u2018limited time offers\u2019 involved. The paper size was not the standard eight and a half by eleven inches. The envelope didn\u2019t have a little window in it.
\nIt was an actual hand written letter on a heavy bond non-white paper, with a real stamp and written return address on the envelope.
\nBet you haven\u2019t had one of those in a while. In fact, unless you have an older family member who lives out of town and has not embraced the internet, or, perhaps before that, the typewriter, I think this would be pretty rare.
\nIn this case, the big surprise is that the letter didn\u2019t come from a person from that nostalgic older generation, but someone much younger than myself.
\nIt got me thinking as to what we actually do receive in our supermailbox on a regular basis.
\nIt used to be bills, but those transactions are almost all handled electronically now, including any associated statements.
\nWe do get the odd small package that comes in the mail rather than being couriered to the front door, but that\u2019s infrequent.
\nThere are a still a few magazines that come this way, but even those are going electronic with tablet versions becoming more accessible.
\nWith the exception of the one noted earlier, the only letters we receive are the rather impersonal form variety, often addressed to \u201coccupant\u201d or \u201chomeowner\u201d. In the cases where they do try to identify us by name, they usually misspell it, often in the most original ways.
\nWe don\u2019t mistakenly receive our neighbours\u2019 mail very often anymore, either.
\nThis is likely due less to improved postal efficiency than the fact that like the rest of us in the 21st century, they\u2019re getting less hard copy mail, too.
\nEven that last seasonal holdout, the Christmas card, is more frequently appearing in one\u2019s electronic inbox, rather than one\u2019s external mailbox.
\nOf course, the one thing that has not decreased in volume, but grown exponentially, is junk mail. We probably receive 387 mature trees\u2019 worth of fliers every year that pretty much all get immediately tossed.
\nIf we had a wood stove, and the space to store all this combustible material, we could probably heat our house each winter with them.
\nMaybe until they figure out another purpose for it, the Town could offer up the use of the Petch House for this storage.
\nIn the end, if you add up the \u201creal\u201d mail we receive, this may account for an average of one or two items every week or two.
\nIt wouldn\u2019t really be worth visiting the supermailbox for anymore, except if you didn\u2019t empty it on a regular basis, the fliers would jam in so tightly that the carrier wouldn\u2019t be able to fit in any real mail, if you were actually sent something.
\nIt\u2019s no wonder that Canada Post is scaling back home delivery across the country and closing post offices, such as the one here in Aurora. Stamp sales certainly can\u2019t be keeping them in business.
\nWe\u2019re now so used to the speed of electronic communication, it\u2019s not like we\u2019re ever going back. It\u2019s hard to believe that not that long ago, people waited days or even weeks between written communications. Today, you\u2019d be frustrated if someone didn\u2019t respond to an email or text within a few minutes.
\nPostal delivery truly was snail mail, comparatively speaking.
\nSo, receiving that hand written letter was quite a surprise, and perhaps most telling for how quickly times have changed; it was almost quaint.<\/p>\n

Feel free to e-mail Scott at: machellscorners@gmail.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston Something unusual happened to me last week; I received a letter in the mail. \u201cHmph \u2013 I get mail all the time\u201d, you probably say. But this was different. It wasn\u2019t a form letter. There was no printing, typeface, letterhead, labels or \u2018limited time offers\u2019 involved. The paper size was not the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1z3","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 04:59:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}