by Robert Morrison

Now that Andy Rooneyhas passed away, his position as CBS News’“curmudgeon-at-large” leaves a great vacancy. I may audition for that role. Admirably harnessed until just weeksbefore his death, Rooney is a model of productive later years. This veteran newsman managed to tickle viewersof “Sixty Minutes” for more than30 years. I loved that clackety-clackold manual typewriter he kept on his paper-and-book strewn desk. ThoughI rarely agreed with him, his long tenure alone invites respect. And it’s atribute to our free republic that you canmake a career of getting in peoples’ faces. Gadfly, Oscar the Grouch or Socrates, this doesn’t happen in tyrannies.

I’d like to try out for the role of Curmudgeon with a gripe of myown. Too many of my friends are forever knocking the post office. Every time the cost of a First Classstamp goes up, howls of protest goup higher. Question: Is there any other country where you can put so much information in an envelope for so little?

Think of what the postal system has meant to American freedom. Go all the way back to Ben Franklin. He was a Royal Postmaster before wegained our independence. He used the mail to stoke the fires of freedom. So, masterfully, did Samuel Adams, inventor of the Committees of Correspondence.

More recently, in the 1970’s, the mass media was monochromatically liberal. Without Rush, without the Internet, how could conservatives compete? How could we even survive?

The U.S. Mail, that’s how. National Review and Human Events and countless direct mail appeals from conservative organizations used the mail to keep the flame of freedom burning.

I am forever being told to get withthe 21st Century. Lots of my young friends want to be Linked In with me.I apologize to all of them, but I don’t know how. Send me an email. Better yet, send me a letter. Or even a postcard.

I’ve been sending letters and post cards to family and friends for 40 years. I can get 400 words on a postcard. Pretty good for 29 cents.

Now, I’ll admit that my good wife has a point when she complains about surly folks behind the counter at our local post offices. It is she who mailsthe packages and buys the stamps in our family. Remember, postal workers: you are civil servants; it helps to be civil.

But I’ve never had anything but good relations with our many letter carriers over the years. In forty years of letter writing, I’ve never had one go astray. That includes weekly letters to a friend in prison and letters to brave U.S. soldiers in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m still astounded at how fast the mail goes through.

There’s an eloquent tribute to the U.S. Mail inscribed on the NationalPostal Museum in Washington. It’s part of the Smithsonian.

“Bond of the scattered family”. I like that line best. I get to see our grandson often, but not as often as I’d like. So I send him weekly postcards. He’s only two and a half, but our daughter reads them to him. I wasn’t sure what impact, if any, they were having.

Today she told us he takes the subscription cards from her magazines.They’re the same size as my postcards. He “reads” them to her and endseach one with “Love, GranDad.”

I love to Skype. I love email. I love blogs. And I’m going to learn to LinkIn, or whatever. But there’s nothing quite like holding a letter that was handwritten by someone you love, a message from one heart to another.

That’s why the Epistles of Paul will never grow old. God’s loving Word was written to us by hand. And God’s Word will stand forever.

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