THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 24, 1994 TAG: 9406220116
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
DATELINE: 940624 LENGTH: Medium
So what? Who needs a machine to read your handwriting?
The U.S. Postal Service does. If its sorting machines were able to dicipher handwriting, there would be no excuse for slow mail.
The lack of the ability to read cursive by machine definitely means a delay for hand-addressed letters.
{REST} Getting down to specifics, a first-class letter postmarked in Raleigh, N.C., on Wednesday was delivered to my home in Portsmouth on Saturday.
When I mentioned the four-day transit period to Postmaster Judith Deegan, she explained it in one sentence: The machines don't read cursive.
But the post office does offer an alternative for regular correspondents. It will print encoded labels to be given to people who regularly post first class mail to the same address, Deegan said.
Even mothers can get them for letters to their children or vice versa. The letters with pre-printed and coded address labels should reach their destinations within two days.
The discussion occurred at one of the recent ``town meetings'' to which the post office invited its customers. The one I went to, which occurred on graduation night for the high schools, was sparsely attended. But the questions were good.
The sorting machines that read are time savers and, thus, money savers, Deegan said.
``A clerk sorting mail normally does about 50 pieces per minute while the machine does 10,000 pieces per minute,'' she said. ``That reduces costs and that's why we have had no rate increase in four years.''
On the subject of rate increases, the postmaster had done her homework.
In 1860, a letter mailed to the West Coast from here cost $5 and took two to three weeks in transit. Today, she said, the same letter costs 29 cents and will go as far as Hawaii in three or four days. A bargain, Deegan said.
``There's a tendency to think you put a stamp on a letter and put it in a mail box and the next day it magically appears where it's supposed to go,'' the postmaster said. ``It doesn't work that way.''
The machines, which make the system work, get a lot of blame for problems raised by clients.
One woman said her letters sometimes seem to have been opened. The optical character reader probably did it, Deegan said.
But, she added, the post office would like to know if anyone suspects tampering by human hand has occurred.
``The hidden value of a 29-cent stamp is the sanctity of the mail,'' Deegan said. ``The United States is the only country in the world with that protection. We do not take lightly the safety, sanctity and security of your mail.''
As far as mail that is lost, she said, ``it's critical to let us know a piece is missing.''
``If everyone tells us, we can see a pattern if there is one,'' she said.
Portsmouth, she said, has had no trouble with embezzling by employees over the past decade.
Also, she said, the post office needs to know when a problem with misdelivered mail or other carrier errors occurs on a continuing basis.
``Yes, we make mistakes,'' the postmaster said. ``But if you have a mistake every Tuesday, that's a problem and we need to know about it.''
The Portsmouth post office delivers 400,000 pieces of mail and 400 to 500 packages every day.
Portsmouth-bound mail is sorted in Norfolk and arrives in Portsmouth at 5:30 a.m. Carriers then put it into their delivery sequences.
Outgoing mail also goes to the Norfolk center with the last trip leaving here at 6:30 p.m. except on Sundays and holidays, when outgoing must be deposited no later than noon in a drive-up collection box at one of the postal stations.
Portsmouth's mail must be sorted in the Norfolk center to make good use of the machine that can't read cursive.
Smaller cities were caught in the middle. Over the past decade, Portsmouth's mail volume increased to the point that it was too large to be sorted here but not large enough to justify an expensive sorter.
Asked at the meeting about last year's rash of mailbox break-ins, Deegan said the two people arrested within two days of the problems were looking for Mother's Day cards with cash in them.
``It's really a shame and a sad state of affairs when society has deteriorated to the point that nothing is sacred,'' the postmaster added. ``But our job is to keep the mail as secure as possible. You have got to know that when you put mail in a slot, it's safe and will arrive at its destination.''
Meanwhile, remember that the sorting machines are still in the first grade. Type or carefully print addresses on your letters to help speed delivery. by CNB