Neither Snow, nor Rain...

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

I first came across these words in a 1981 song called "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson. Like many of the lyrics in that song---indeed, the album---are somewhat non sequitur, so this statement did not seem to be out of place. Having grown up in the hinterlands of Canada, I did not have the background to immediately associate this with the US Postal Service, but soon enough someone did mention it. It seemed like such a cool motto that I was surprised not to see more use made of it in the media. Twenty years after the release of Anderson's "Big Science" album, I wandered around a corner in New York City to see a grand Greek-styled building. I started to look at it from different angles to photograph it, or elements of it, and suddenly realized that I recognized the words across the facade just above the ornate Corinthian columns.

In the meantime, I had also learned that this was not the motto of the US Postal Service---the USPS does not actually have one---but an appropriate quote from Herodotus' Historia, added by the building's architects. This is apparently the most poetic of several translations of the Greek---certainly more so than the one other I have read---and originally referred to the relay messengers in the 5th century BC Persian's communication system.

Official motto or not...worthy words for any work ethic.