When I worked in the public affairs office at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, every once in a while a letter arrived with a simple handwritten address. Inevitably, the envelope contained a note from an elementary school student somewhere in the United States asking for information about the college and about the state of Maine. I made a point of responding to these requests, in part because I was so delighted

to receive mail that was handwritten.

Alas, in light of the anthrax-laced letters that have turned up in recent months, such envelopes will now be scrutinized as possible bio-terrorist weapons. In fact, the infamous letters sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy each bore a return address from a fourth-grade class at a nonexistent school in New Jersey.

It is sad to think that innocence has been hijacked, that from this time forward requests from young people for information, for an autograph, for support for a field trip or playground equipment will be suspected of containing murderous material.

I’m all the more upset by this turn of events because I love mail. I have probably loved it since the late 1960s when I went off to boarding school in Connecticut. A stop at the mailbox was an important part of the morning routine, and if there was something in it, hosanna, was I happy. Years later, I used to have this recurring dream that I was back at school and realized that there were actually two different places where I could pick up my mail. What a great dream!

Despite the headlines, I continue to pick up the mail at the Mount Desert post office. I continue to look forward to the daily sort, flipping through credit card promotions, digging through catalogs, searching for the personal. The holiday season offers a particularly rich harvest of correspondence from friends and family, and I keenly anticipate

opening red and green and decorated envelopes with tidings of good cheer.

But my pleasure is tainted by the thought of postal workers who now must add anthrax to the rain, sleet, ice and snow they already brave to make their deliveries. And so it is to those men and women, and to the pilots and airplane crews, firemen, police and rescue workers – to all those who risk their lives on a daily basis – that I send a special note of thanks this year. I send it express and with all my heart.

Carl Little is the director of communications at the Maine Community Foundation in Ellsworth.