This is the first time that I have ever visited Postal Profiles. I have visited the site PostalMag several times and I saw a picture of my close personal friend on the ad. My wife snapped the photo of him. I saw a pic of someone named Carrie next to him. If she knew how crazy Mark was, she would asked to be put on the first row. LOL! I will not be a daily visitor on here but  I will write back to those of you who message me.

I am a rural carrier in Colorado and I am heavily involved in the NRLCA. I was the past Colorado president until I got married last Valentine's Day. I am staying on as secretary/treasurer because a lot of that work can be done at home on this computer that is composing this blog. Alan VerValin is taking my place out here.

You may have noticed that one of my favorite books and authors is J.R.R. Tolkien. One of the strangest messages I gleaned from his writing is that the Dark Ages may have been  the brightest of times, and it is this: that they were times of defined and definite duties and freedoms. The king might rule badly, but everyone agreed as to what good rule was. Not only every earl and baron but every carl and churl knew what an ideal king would say and do. The peasant might behave badly; but the peasant did not expect praise for it, even his own praise. These assertions can be quibbled over endlessly, of course; there are always exceptional persons and exceptional circumstances. Nevertheless they represent a broad truth about Christianized barbarian society as a whole, and arguments that focus on exceptions provide a picture that is fundamentally false, even when the instances on which they are based are real and honestly presented. At a time when few others knew this, and very few others understood its implications, J. R. R. Tolkien both knew and understood, and was able to express that understanding in art, and in time in great art.

As a child I had been taught a code of conduct: I was to be courteous and considerate, and most courteous and most considerate of those less strong than I -- of girls and women, and of old people especially. Less educated men might hold inferior positions, but that did not mean that they themselves were inferior; they might be (and often would be) wiser, braver, and more honest than I was. They were entitled to respect, and were to be thanked when they befriended me, even in minor matters. Legitimate authority was to be obeyed without shirking and without question. Mere strength (the corrupt coercion Washington calls power and in Denver clout) was to be defied. It might be better to be a slave than to die, but it was better to die than to be a slave who acquiesced in his own slavery. Above all, I was to be honest with everyone. Debts were to be paid, and my word was to be as good as I could make it.

We might have a society in which the laws were few and just, simple, permanent, and familiar to everyone -- a society in which everyone stood shoulder-to-shoulder because everyone lived by the same changeless rules, and everyone knew what those rules were. When we had it, we would also have a society in which the lack of wealth was not reason for resentment but a spur to ambition, and in which wealth was not a cause for self-indulgence but a call to service. We had it once, and some time in this third millennium we shall have it again; and if we forget to thank John Ronald Reuel Tolkien for it when we get it, we will already have begun the slow and not always unpleasant return to Mordor. Freedom, love of neighbor, and personal responsibility are steep slopes; he could not climb them for us -- we must do that ourselves. But he has shown us the road and the reward.