Mail

Gardeners are forever looking for something to wrap a flower bed around. There has to be a bed along the front of the porch, and others might be carved out around a garden shed, a birdbath or the trunks of shade trees. For many people, there's another opportunity right out by the curb: the mailbox. A garden bed around a mailbox gives gardeners a chance to put their horticultural stamp where it's sure to show. In the midst of handsome shrubs, interesting ornamental grasses or hard-working annual and perennial flowers, a standard-issue mailbox on a post becomes a piece of functional art. When there's a flower bed to visit, the trip out to the mailbox is much more interesting, even if the postman brings nothing but bills.

Helping companies save money on postage can bring in the big bucks. Baltimore-based Three Dog Logistics picks up mail from clients with high volumes, "commingles" it with other client mail going to the same ZIP code and delivers it closer to the end destination to qualify for a U.S. Postal Service discount. The company made the Inc. 5000 list of fast-growing private companies last year - again - because revenue grew nearly 150 percent from 2008 to 2011, to about $12 million. "We've been on the Inc. 5000 for three years in a row," said John Kennedy, the company's CEO. "And we actually might make the Inc. again this year.

In her 24 years of delivering mail to hundreds of East Baltimoreans, Earline Bushrod has faced all manner of weather-related challenges. She says the worst mishaps occur when things aren't what they seem. An example? Stepping into 2 feet of snow when you're expecting only a few inches. "It just leaned me over a bit," Bushrod said as she stumbled before regaining her balance during her route. "But I'll continue to do what I do." Bushrod, 54, and the rest of her fellow postal service workers went back to business Thursday while city, state and federal employees had another day off. Baltimore streets were largely clear, but pathways to mail slots at many homes were not, after two 20-inch-plus storms in five days.

Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the former commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan whose nomination to lead NATO was delayed last year while investigators probed his e-mails to a Florida socialite, has retired from the military. The Naval Academy graduate returned to Annapolis a decade ago to serve as commandant of midshipmen. He was the first Marine to hold the second-in-command position. Allen's surprise retirement, announced by the White House on Tuesday, came less than a month after the Pentagon cleared him of wrongdoing in his e-mail correspondence with Tampa socialite Jill Kelley.

Regarding your article on expanded testing for sexually transmitted diseases ("In-home kits aim to get those at risk to test for STDs," Feb. 22), using the mail to distribute such kits is a good idea. Many young people today are not practicing safe sex, yet parents often don't take their children to get tested because they are embarrassed, don't have time, or don't realize their kids may be infected. Some young people think that if they don't have any symptoms they are not at risk.

Mail carriers will attempt to resume deliveries today, according to the U.S. Postal Service. Deliveries were canceled throughout Maryland on Saturday due to the snowy weather, said Postal Service spokewoman Freda Sauter. On Monday, "carriers will make every attempt to deliver as long as there's safe conditions," she said. Residents are asked to clear a path to their mailboxes to ensure it is visible and safe to access. Mail will not be delivered if carriers deem conditions to be unsafe, according to the postal service.

Ever since Congress stupidly decided to make the U.S. Postal Service a quasi-private entity, the organization has been going steadily downhill. The arrangement has grossly inflated the ranks of upper and mid-level management, people who have nothing to do with the post office's actual mission of delivering the mail. On top of that, some upper management idiots decided to spend millions of dollars on changing the design of the Postal Service's logo and are now engaged in a massive TV advertising campaign to get people to ship more packages by USPS.

Years ago - 2008 to be exact - I wrote about a $336 million settlement that required Visa, MasterCard and Diner's Club to return foreign transaction fees paid by those traveling outside the country or who made overseas purchases online. The trio had been accused of hiding these transaction fees. They didn't admit any wrongdoing. At the time, I encouraged readers affected - those paying the fees from February 1996 to November 2006 - to fill out a claim. The refund was expected to take up to 18 months.

A former postal worker admitted Friday that she stole mail and the money inside those envelopes at a Linthicum postal facility, victimizing more than 250 people, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore. Dorothy Jean Gibson, 56, of Windsor Mill, who worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 13 years, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to theft of mail by a postal employee, officials said. When sentenced Jan. 11, Gibson could receive a maximum sentence of five years in prison plus three years of supervised release, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

A Columbia postal carrier found a ready solution to lugging around her sack of mail during the recent record-breaking heat. She tossed it into the woods.The carrier -- temporarily hired to fill in for vacationing employees -- dumped the mail from more than half her route into a wooded area Saturday near where Columbia carriers often stop to eat lunch, postal inspectors said yesterday.The inspectors say they believe the carrier just didn't want to deliver mail anymore in the 102-degree heat.

The U.S. Postal Service last week announced it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays in an effort to curtail losses it has seen in recent years. The changes, set to begin Aug. 5, should save the agency $2 billion annually at a time when the Postal Service lost $15.9 billion in the last fiscal year, according to a statement by Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe posted on the agency's website. Congress has stunted attempts to change the delivery process in the past, and this time lawmakers in Washington confronted this decision with opposition as soon as it was announced.

Wanda Feagen pulled on her blue United States Postal Service coat and a pair of thick black gloves shortly after 10 a.m. Saturday, blinking against a hard wind and waiting for her mail delivery truck to fill up on gas. "Hoo hoo!" she said of the cold weather. Feagen had just set out from the Gwynn Oak post office after cataloging mail since the start of her day at 7:30 a.m., and was on her way to the rolling residential hills nearby to begin her regular weekend delivery route.

A Baltimore man claiming to be a financial adviser who could produce high returns without high risk pleaded guilty Friday to mail fraud in connection with a scheme that bilked $890,000 from clients, according to federal and state prosecutors. Casey Charles, 33, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine, prosecutors said. According to prosecutors, Charles established Infinite Equity Strategies LLC in 2007. Via direct mail and ads in newspapers and on TV, he promoted the company as a financial adviser whose clients had not lost money in the recession.

Once as much of a test of a civilian government's effectiveness as collecting the garbage and keeping the peace in the streets, the delivery of packages and letters via a government postal service has undergone tremendous changes since the days when Benjamin Franklin got the unenviable task of being the nation's first postmaster general. In the United States, it became evident nearly a century ago that there was money to be made by delivering packages more quickly and reliably than the U.S. Postal Service.

James A. Buck gladly accepted the package at his Parkville office from the deliveryman wearing a UPS uniform. But minutes later, police swooped in to arrest Buck, 54, and seized the parcel, which had contained three pounds of marijuana he sent to himself from California, according to court records. Buck pleaded guilty to a possession charge, though he said in a recent interview that the drugs were for medicinal use. Buck's case and search warrants unsealed last week offer a glimpse into a long-standing — and growing — smuggling practice: mailing drugs from California to Maryland.

A Baltimore jury convicted Marcus Satchell Thursday of second degree murder for shooting and killing a man in the Northwest Baltimore in 2010, after he mailed a confession to the victim's family, the State's Attorney's office said. Satchell, 35, picked up his victim - identified in Baltimore Sun records as Javon Perry, 27 - on July 17, 2010 and took him to Park Heights Avenue. They got in a fight and another person gave Satchell a handgun, prosecutors said. He fired four times, hitting Perry in the neck once, prosecutors said.

I started getting X-rated e-mail on AOL out of the clear blue. I can't imagine where they came from, but I need to stop them immediately. My children use this computer and e-mail.You should log on to America Online, type in Control + K for Keyword Search and type in Mail Controls. Many options are available in the windows that follow.You can order all e-mail addressed to your account shut off. Another choice lets you stipulate which e-mail senders' notes will reach you, causing all others to be rejected.

One ugly comment.That's all it takes for Joe Collins to leave a neighborhood without delivering the mail."The first time I hear 'Where the [expletive] have you been all day?' I'm out of there," said Mr. Collins, a Southwest Baltimore letter carrier. "There are routes that I'm afraid to go on."It wasn't like that 10 years ago. These things used to be unheard-of."The unheard-of has become common in certain parts of Baltimore, and few people deal with it as much as those who daily cover 18,738 miles of city sidewalk to deliver the mail.

Early voting is new for me after living outside the country for a decade. Last Friday, I took advantage of it and voted in Westminster. Yet, I am not completely comfortable with this novelty. In particular, two things disturb me. First, I am uncomfortable with the concept in principle. Since 1845, Election Day has been the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. We still have the same Constitution ratified in 1789 and, although amended, this stability has been one of our greatest assets and unique in the world.

As an octogenarian, I hoped to avoid the problem of getting to the polls on Election Day by requesting an absentee ballot. But guess what? I spent hours in the effort but all to no avail. My recent attempt to obtain an absentee ballot for the general election shows that this is a futile effort. After calling to get an absentee ballot on Oct. 16, I instead got a form in the mail to fill out so I could apply for one. I got the form Oct. 20 and mailed it back two days later. By as Oct. 31, the last day for submitting absentee ballots, I still hadn't received mine in the mail.