Please Mr. Postman

We receive a lot of mail. Some of it is even ours.

We get a lot of magazines and even more catalogs. We get catalogs from places we have never heard from, let alone order from. And we receive a lot of first class mail and bulk mail.

Some of the mail is for us. Bills, of course, and invitations. Letters, rarely, but always appreciated, and cards more often. More and more solicitations for donations these days.

We also receive mail sent to us in care of the condo association. Allyson is the treasurer, and everyone in the association sends her their dues. But I don't think the condo association mail is a source of confusion for our postman.

The source seems to be all of the other people who live with us who do not share our last name. I have noticed this issue before, when our niece lived with us. That was in the old house. After she moved in and started to receive mail, I noticed that the volume of mail intended for other people started to rise. I had forgotten about it until recently, when campaign workers started having their mail sent to us.

So we get our mail, and the condo association mail, and now the mail for these other people who live with us temporarily who do not share our last name. This summer, a few people moved in, and some of them changed their address to our house. Shortly after, we started receiving their mail, and then random pieces of mail.

Some of it shares our house number, but is sent to a house on another street with our house number. Typically, the mail is intended for a house a block or two or three away from ours, which makes me think our mailman is making the error. Maybe the volume of mail going to our house number confuses him, and he just starts routing mail with our house number to our house, whether or not the street is right.

Recently I have noticed mail intended for people who live in the neighborhood and do not share our street number. This has been only a momentary setback for my theory, though, when I notice that this misdelivered mail is intended for people who share our first names.

I can see the mailman, sitting down to sort all of his mail, quickly throwing letters into piles, rapidly scanning the addresses, and every once in a while throwing a house number or first name match into our pile.

I take this mail to our neighbors. I worry about late birthday cards, urgent pleas from spurned lovers, loving missives from lonely grandparents sitting too long in our foyer waiting for me to get them to their rightful destination. These letters weigh on me, confronting me each time I arrive home, chastising me for my slothfulness. I refuse to be one of those people who are party to mail thirty years later arriving at someone's mailbox, spurring the TV news to do a report on the nostalgia of a long-lost letter finally reaching its intended recipient. After two or three days, or a week at the outset, I take the missing missive to our neighbor's house and drop it in their box or through their slot. And I feel once again all is right with the world.

Until last week. We received a letter intended for a woman who lives a mile from here. It looked like a birthday card. Or maybe a condolences card. Or maybe, worst of all, a get well card intended to cheer up someone who has just endured some awful surgery and who would be comforted that her old friend from Georgia (the return address) remembered her at this difficult time. The street number was way off. The names were not even a remote match.

This piece of mail really knocked me off my game. Maybe mail is really just a probability vector. 99.9%, or 98% of the time, you get your mail. But in some small percentage of the time, you don't. It gets stuck behind some machine at the post office or lodged in the bottom of a mail carrier's bag or delivered to someone too far away to feel enough of a connection to attempt to right the delivery wrong.

I went into a slight depression. This piece received my immediate attention, but I did not cart it the mile. I just wrote on the front, accusingly, I know, "Delivered to wrong address" and dropped it in the mailbox, hoping that maybe this time, they would get it right and Mary's get-well card would finally arrive at its proper destination. And as I did so, I said a little prayer.

Please, Mr. Postman, please, take extra care with those hand-addressed envelopes intended for sons and daughters and fathers, mothers, friends, cousins, bringing cheer, good news, comfort, celebration, please take extra care and get these messages to their intended recipients. Please take a second look at names, and streets, and cities, and in the bottom of your bag, and know that we are grateful for that extra time you take to get us our mail.

Fake Empire

As I stood in front of the stage Tuesday night, shortly after CNN had broadcast its projection that Barack Obama will be our next President, and shortly after Senator McCain made his gracious concession speech, I cried while watching a video the campaign had put together. It shows roads and people throughout the country discussing their dreams and hopes and flashing signs of hope. The video is entitled "Signs of Hope and Change" and can be found at the link on the BarackObama.com website.

I had seen the video first in the stadium in Denver the night President-Elect Obama accepted the nomination. That night, I sat next to my daughter, soaking up the pure Denver air and the atmosphere of hope. The video summed up the journey that the campaign and all of us supporters had taken on this road to a new country. This night, I stood with my wife and son and his girlfriend and 250,000 other Americans, celebrating the audacity of hope. I cried with joy and exhaustion and disbelief, that this country at this time elected this leader.

Suddenly, I was overcome with terror. I recognized the song on the video - it is "Fake Empire" by The National, remixed without the words.

I usually love the sly irony of music counterposed against visual images. My current favorites are the UPS commercials with that long-haired adverstising executive sketching his ideas in brown ink on a whiteboard, all to the music of The Postal Service. I love the delicious crosscurrent of UPS using a song from The Postal Service. And I love this song by The National. It is compelling and original. It supports the video well, the drumbeat insistent and moving forward. But the title suddenly hit me as inappropriate.

Fake Empire on our night of triumph? Was this some sick joke of a subversive new media Obama campaign staffer, undercutting the accomplishments of our new President-Elect? Is the title meant to imply the false hopes of the future, that we are building a Fake Empire?

I was desperate to find the lyrics. I tried listening on the tinny speaker of my iPhone, but I could not make out the words. I found them, and post them below for you.

I felt relief. The images in the song are gentle, heart-warming, inspiring. Maybe the new media staffer who had selected this song, captured by the beat and tune, after reading the lyrics, and acknowledging the potential danger of the ironic title, chose to believe that those who got the joke saw Fake Empire as a reference to the past eight years. We're half-awake in a fake empire. And now, maybe we are waking up from this nightmare. Despite the shape in which we now find ourselves, our American values and the simple joys of this American life are still with us. This song celebrates those joys, even in the midst of this Fake Empire that is now coming to an end.

I listened to President Barack Obama's speech even harder than I thought possible. I cried some more, this time hugging my wife so hard, missing her already as the thought of her flying away to DC to work for this President and the pain of that separation weighed on me. So proud of her for working so hard to end this fake empire, and her contribution to make this moment and this speech possible.

I loved the humility of the President-Elect's speech. I loved the rhythm of his words. Yes We Can. After reading the lyrics below, I noted the echo, from the song's "let's not try to figure everything out at once" to the President-Elect's caution that we won't get there in one year, or maybe not even one term, but we will get there.

We will get there. Here's to the end of our Fake Empire. Here's to celebrating this hope-full future, to the end of fake empire building, and to the hard work ahead of us, re-building this nation, with a renewed sense of purpose and hope and optimism and faith.

The National
Fake Empire
Stay out super late tonight
picking apples, making pies
put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire

Tiptoe through our shiny city
with our diamond slippers on
do our gay ballet on ice
bluebirds on our shoulders
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire

Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
we’re half-awake in a fake empire
we’re half-awake in a fake empire