Thanks to the popularity of e-mail, text messaging and online bill-paying, the U.S. Postal Service is losing billions of dollars. It may even eliminate Saturday mail delivery.

Some people don’t care. They sneer at “snail” mail, and consider it costly, obsolete. If they want to communicate, they pick up the cell phone; if they want to have a package delivered, they drive it to FedEx.

E-mail is fast and simple, but to me an old-fashioned, handwritten letter has value in this speed-obsessed world. I have deleted hundreds of e-mails in one fell swoop, without taking the time to reread them, but I still have a letter that my Grandpa Cullen sent to me when I was 8.

I like to receive letters, thank-you notes, birthday cards and Christmas cards, and I like to send them too. Even today, it costs just 44 cents to send one from Danville to Sandybeach, Hawaii, or Frozentoes, Alaska … a genuine bargain.

Historians worry about the disappearance of permanent, written records. If there were no “real” letters, diaries, governmental files, handbills, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers and books — real ink on real paper — what would be left? Will electronic records even survive for 100 years? And what will happen if they don’t?

My heart breaks when I think about how much history was lost in the 1950s and 1960s, when most newspapers and libraries had their bound newspapers microfilmed, then threw the originals away. That saved space, but later people discovered that some microfilm becomes illegible, or breaks. County courthouses microfilmed records, too, and many hauled truckloads of early documents to the dump.

The federal government can hand billions of dollars to crooked bankers and pay billions to destroy perfectly functional trucks and cars, but it can’t save the Postal Service.

The Postal Service has been required to pay its own costs since 1970, and it made a profit until 2006. Since then, declining mail volume has created major problems. It delivered 17 percent fewer pieces in 2009 than it did in 2006, and lost $1.4 billion. That money was borrowed from the U.S. Treasury.

More declines in volume, coupled with the soaring cost of retiree health benefits, could create $238 billion in losses over the next 10 years, Postmaster General John Potter recently said. Approximately half of the present 300,000 postal workers are expected to retire by 2020.

Eliminating Saturday mail delivery would save $40 billion over a decade. Potter also wants to close and consolidate 154 post offices. More and more part-time workers would be hired as full-time workers retire.

Clearly, mail delivery isn’t going away entirely. It’s an essential government function, like feeding the Army. No private contractor will carry a letter from the Florida Keys to Alaska for 44 cents.

I’m going to do my bit by sending more letters.

Our Christmas card list will be expanded. Birthday cards will go to more friends and family. And I’m going to thank more people, in writing, for more things. I will send more cards and letters to offer encouragement, interest and sympathy. It shows good breeding.

I have shoeboxes filled with kind letters sent to me through the years by readers who liked something that I wrote. I always thanked them by return mail. Many friendships began that way. Those messages weren’t deleted 100 at a time; they were saved, and they can be reread.

In his bestselling book, “The Last Lecture,” the late Randy Pausch addressed all this.

“Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet powerful things human can do for each other,” he said. “And despite my love of efficiency, I think that thank-you notes are best done the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper. You never know what magic might happen after it arrives in someone’s mailbox.”

David Dunn, author of the 1947 book, “Try Giving Yourself Away,” wrote this:

“We fail to make greater use of this governmental partnership-in-giving, not because we are unaware of its possibilities, but because we permit ourselves to be thoughtless. We know how much we appreciate notes from friends, but we do not stop often enough to think how much they would appreciate notes from us.

“ … There is something particularly YOU in the letter or note you write. It says, ‘I think enough of you to take the trouble to sit down and try to put into words the interest I have in you.’ It matters not whether you have the gift of expression. If you say what is in your heart, the words will not matter. And who knows? Your letter may arrive at a time of crisis. The course of many a person’s life has been changed by a letter received in the morning mail.”

It’s satisfying to write a “real” letter, put it in an envelope and drop it into the mailbox. A day or two later, I know, someone will hold it and connect with me. Who knows? It may be read by someone I will never meet, 100 years from now.

Not a bad investment, for 44 cents.

Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.