No more mail

Canada Post is in lockdown. Mail service has been suspended nationwide, after 12 days of rotating strikes from Canada Postal Union Workers. In response, Canada Post has shut the system down.

--All post offices staffed by CUPW members are closed.
--All mail processing plants and letter carrier depots are closed.
--Mailboxes have been sealed to prevent mail from being deposited.
--Mail Delivery is suspended.
--Effective immediately, all service guarantees are suspended.
--Canada Post cannot predict how long the current situation will last.

I'm trying to imagine a future without libraries, bookstores, and now, house-to-house mail delivery. Doctors used to visit patients at home. Now you have to make an appointment, in advance, and you have to go to them. They won't come to you.

Imagine no more home mail delivery where everyone is forced to rent a metal box in some big building downtown where you have to go every day just to get your mail. Email is making personal correspondence by letter ("Who does *that* anymore!?") obsolete. Some people complain they get 300 emails a day. You can't just delete junk mail delivered to your door, though. More fodder for the recycle bin. What a waste of a tree's life.

I miss getting mail, though. And I guess I can forget about sending out those packages already taped and ready to ship out. Wonder where they're storing all the mail till someone gives the go-ahead to go ahead and start delivering it again. I pity our poor mailman. He will need a bigger carry-bag. A little wagon, maybe.

Please--just don't lock down the Internet yet. I can't imagine being communicationless for a week. But with LulzSec, Stuxnet and Anonymous all creating havoc everywhere else in cyberdom, who knows what might happen next.

Meanwhile . . . the nation waits. Our mail is . . . somewhere.

Impasse.