For most of us, the daily mail brings bills, advertisements, a magazine or newspaper, political circulars in the appropriate season, and the occasional holiday or birthday card.
But a personal letter is as rare as a blizzard in July.
For two centuries, the U.S. Postal Service has maintained a dead letter office, the cemetery of undeliverable mail. Today, the practice of writing letters is itself nearly as dead, the victim of phones, emails, and texts. These means of communication are faster, less expensive, more dependable, and generally more convenient than sitting down to write out a letter to, for instance, a daughter at college, affixing a stamp, and getting it into the mail….