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In an opinion piece for Sunday’s New York Times, a writer from Turkey praised “a place that is as enchanting to me as any winter wonderland: my local post office.”
“In line,” wrote Zeynep Tufekci, who is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, “I thought fondly of the year I came to this country from Turkey as an adult and discovered the magic of reliable mail service. Dependable infrastructure is magical not simply because it works, but also because it allows innovation to thrive.
“I noticed a letter carrier emptying a mailbox,” she wrote. “I was slightly unnerved: Was the mail being stolen? He then went over to another mailbox with the flag up, and emptied that box, too. I got my hint when he skipped the mailbox with the flag down. Yes, I was told, in the United States, mail gets picked up from your house, six days a week, free of charge.”