Stand By Your Mail

07/18/2026

“The 125-year-old elevator wheezed to a halt somewhere above Philadelphia’s skyline. When the door creaked open, I was inside the clock tower of the US’s tallest municipal building, gazing down at “The Birthplace of America” from a 500ft (152m) observation deck atop City Hall.
From my glass perch, I could make out City Tavern, where the Founding Fathers plotted the American Revolution. Just west, I spotted Carpenters’ Hall, where the Colonies united against the British at the First Continental Congress. Nearby was Independence Hall, where the US Constitution was signed in 1787.

Squinting, I then followed a parade of red-white-and-blue American flags down Market Street, towards the Delaware River and New Jersey in the distance.

“So, everything I can see from up here was once part of… Sweden?” I asked our guide.

“I think so,” he said, hesitantly. “Though you’re the first visitor to ever ask about that.”

Alamy Philadelphia is considered “The Birthplace of America” – but almost no one realises the area was once Swedish (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
Philadelphia is considered “The Birthplace of America” – but almost no one realises the area was once Swedish.

Ask most Americans and they’ll tell you that the United States started in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776 when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. Fittingly, the city is the epicentre of the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations this week, and as many as 1.5 million people are expected to descend on it for what will be the nation’s largest Fourth of July festival.

But chances are, almost none of those coming realises that the US’s political and ideological birthplace was once part of a little-known Swedish colony known as Nya Sverige (New Sweden). In fact, very few Americans (or Swedes) have any idea that there ever even was a Swedish colony in America.”

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260629-new-sweden-the-uss-long-lost-secret-colony

Antonio L. Arroyo Adam Ninyo Fredric King postal.paws Liza Barrie  Joe Foley Pascal Akesson Victoria Bruce 

07/07/2026

The Great Postal Heist is showing in New York City on Wednesday for the Workers Unite Film Festival. I’ll be there and I can’t wait to meet workers and answer questions about the film. When I began the journey I was shocked to learn of the widespread mistreatment of employees and mishandling of the service. I was brought into the homes and lives of the people and places I filmed with my partner Sheila and was inspired by the resilience and courage of those who deliver for us everyday, in spite of the odds. Please come out and see what we made. Share this event. And comment below so we can hear from you.



When: Wednesday, October 29 · 5 - 6:45pm EDT
Where: Retail Wholesale & Department Store Union
370 7th Avenue New York, NY 10001

06/27/2026

To the Guy Listening to Kansas in His Yard,

It’s allergy season in Portland, and maybe you thought that’s why my eyes were wet. You couldn’t have known what l’d just come to know, about my friend Rob, a man who’d held nothing back, who’d worn his whole life in his eyes, who’d died, days earlier, alone.

Whatever you thought, when you saw me coming, you didn’t hesitate. You tipped your beer. You smiled. You kept nodding to the words you’d put into the air, words l’d sung, and laughed at, but only now heard:

Carry on, my wayward son.

-Brian Benson

Off Assignment, 2020

Off Assignment Postcards From A Stranger

06/25/2026

03/29/2026

03/21/2026

To the High School Couple in Line at the
Ice Cream Parlor,

You look smitten. Or rather, your foreheads and eyes do. I can’t tell how your noses and mouths feel about the relationship because of your masks.

Soon, you’ll select your flavors and sit down over 1m apart. There will be Xs taped on the bench, the government’s way of enforcing social distancing. You’ll watch each other remove your masks and lick your ice cream cones. You will not touch in the shop. But then you will leave, and you’ll grab hands and wander up the hill to the MRT station, through the muggy air of another Friday night in Singapore.

-Ginny Fahs

03/21/2026

  .official @post_office_facts      .paws .barrie   .[email protected]  .paws

03/06/2026

To the Afternoon Rollerbladers,

Thirteen-year-olds in shoes with pink wheels:
I know you. I remember summers that stretched on for years and too-late twilights and still wishing we had more time in the day to play. I remember the feeling that summer might go on forever, and what a dream that would be, what a distant nightmare “school” was.

Im back in the neighborhood now-back in the house l’d come to refer to as my parents’ place-dreaming about fall, about early sunsets on a reopened world, about the end of staying home.

You zoom past me on the sidewalk and I can’t help but wish I still longed for endless summer, for the days | was content to go nowhere at all, so long as went very fast.

-Kristina Cuello