Here's something you might be interested in.
I’ve been getting these e-mails to get involved in keeping a local post office, the one up on 26th and C, George Washington is the formal name, open. The Postmaster is asking to close it, and a few others, for lack of business, activists say they want to keep this one open for various reasons, mainly because old people and people without cars who live in that area need access to a local post office. They want people to attend various meetings and write letters to show support.
In practical terms, the problem of what do with post offices is somewhat difficult. For younger people who are doing most or all of their business on-line, this may seem like a no-brainer. For the older folks, who still need a place to buy a stamp, stick it on the envelope and stuff it in the mailbox, or put a package in the mail, it’s hard to imagine them adapting to losing the place in the neighborhood where they could do that. The logical thing to do would be to have those post offices open only two or three days a week, half days, for full service use by the public, with the lobbies open to sell stamps and pick up mail from the post offices boxes Monday through Friday.
About the only time I use a post office is at Christmas, to send packages. I go to the one on Midway, usually during the busiest time of the season, so I gotta wait in those lines too. I need to go in because I need to see what size boxes will fit the stuff I want to send; I use the boxes they provide because it’s a flat rate, if it’s cheaper than sending it with my boxes, but I won’t know that until I get there and have the stuff weighed and figure out the rates. The time is coming when I just send an e-gift certificate instead of packages, which doesn’t make me happy, but what can you do? In Mexico they say, You gotta be like the sharks, keep swimming.
Which leads me back to the battle over the Washington Post Office. In this community, there’s obviously more to the business than the business at hand. As the lead story in the Reader indicates, people here are aware that there are forces at work intent on re-shaping this community. The history of this area is long and complex; once native lands, then conquered lands, then granted lands, then land fought over between two sovereign nations, then land shared under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which in my opinion is still the operating legal document but you know how the good ole US of A works, though there are some interesting court skirmishes going on re the border fence …
So for a time San Diego was all Mexico, then it was shared Mexico, then it was push Mexicans into their place in the East End (as it was once known), then push a lot of them back into Mexico, then the ones that were left keep them around for laborers but keep them down or who knows what might happen, then it was slice up the community by building the I-5 right through the middle of them, and dice them into bits with the Coronado bridge. Then the land elsewhere became expensive and crowded, and one day somebody woke up to the fact that hey those Mexicans are sitting on prime waterfront property. If this were Mission Beach or La Jolla, man, those views would be worth a fortune. We just gotta move the industrial out which was not a prob for those Mexicans living there but hey we won’t raise our children around that stuff, and the infrastructure suddenly needs fixing, there was never any money to do that before but suddenly when whites are buying up properties and putting their businesses here, wow, ain’t it a wonder, suddenly there’s even a new library here, residents asked for a new library for fifty years and there was never any money, then suddenly Bersin and Inzunza found land just for the grabbing, and what the heck if those Mexican school children at Logan Elementary lose their playground and lose part of their park and lose their lives getting runned over by cars and maybe in the end even end up losing their school, it’s for the best you know. Progress.
You can’t stop progress by saving one post office. Or maybe you think you can. Or maybe you want to think you can so you don’t have to face the fact that you can’t save a community by saving a post office. Or maybe you can save a community by saving a post office. Maybe the powers that be will tear it down for just that reason. Or maybe the powers that be will cave and leave the post office standing. And maybe the post office will stand there, when everything around it has changed. And maybe it will see another day, a day and a victory won by other means. All things change. The sharks know to keep swimming.
I’ve been getting these e-mails to get involved in keeping a local post office, the one up on 26th and C, George Washington is the formal name, open. The Postmaster is asking to close it, and a few others, for lack of business, activists say they want to keep this one open for various reasons, mainly because old people and people without cars who live in that area need access to a local post office. They want people to attend various meetings and write letters to show support.
In practical terms, the problem of what do with post offices is somewhat difficult. For younger people who are doing most or all of their business on-line, this may seem like a no-brainer. For the older folks, who still need a place to buy a stamp, stick it on the envelope and stuff it in the mailbox, or put a package in the mail, it’s hard to imagine them adapting to losing the place in the neighborhood where they could do that. The logical thing to do would be to have those post offices open only two or three days a week, half days, for full service use by the public, with the lobbies open to sell stamps and pick up mail from the post offices boxes Monday through Friday.
About the only time I use a post office is at Christmas, to send packages. I go to the one on Midway, usually during the busiest time of the season, so I gotta wait in those lines too. I need to go in because I need to see what size boxes will fit the stuff I want to send; I use the boxes they provide because it’s a flat rate, if it’s cheaper than sending it with my boxes, but I won’t know that until I get there and have the stuff weighed and figure out the rates. The time is coming when I just send an e-gift certificate instead of packages, which doesn’t make me happy, but what can you do? In Mexico they say, You gotta be like the sharks, keep swimming.
Which leads me back to the battle over the Washington Post Office. In this community, there’s obviously more to the business than the business at hand. As the lead story in the Reader indicates, people here are aware that there are forces at work intent on re-shaping this community. The history of this area is long and complex; once native lands, then conquered lands, then granted lands, then land fought over between two sovereign nations, then land shared under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which in my opinion is still the operating legal document but you know how the good ole US of A works, though there are some interesting court skirmishes going on re the border fence …
So for a time San Diego was all Mexico, then it was shared Mexico, then it was push Mexicans into their place in the East End (as it was once known), then push a lot of them back into Mexico, then the ones that were left keep them around for laborers but keep them down or who knows what might happen, then it was slice up the community by building the I-5 right through the middle of them, and dice them into bits with the Coronado bridge. Then the land elsewhere became expensive and crowded, and one day somebody woke up to the fact that hey those Mexicans are sitting on prime waterfront property. If this were Mission Beach or La Jolla, man, those views would be worth a fortune. We just gotta move the industrial out which was not a prob for those Mexicans living there but hey we won’t raise our children around that stuff, and the infrastructure suddenly needs fixing, there was never any money to do that before but suddenly when whites are buying up properties and putting their businesses here, wow, ain’t it a wonder, suddenly there’s even a new library here, residents asked for a new library for fifty years and there was never any money, then suddenly Bersin and Inzunza found land just for the grabbing, and what the heck if those Mexican school children at Logan Elementary lose their playground and lose part of their park and lose their lives getting runned over by cars and maybe in the end even end up losing their school, it’s for the best you know. Progress.
You can’t stop progress by saving one post office. Or maybe you think you can. Or maybe you want to think you can so you don’t have to face the fact that you can’t save a community by saving a post office. Or maybe you can save a community by saving a post office. Maybe the powers that be will tear it down for just that reason. Or maybe the powers that be will cave and leave the post office standing. And maybe the post office will stand there, when everything around it has changed. And maybe it will see another day, a day and a victory won by other means. All things change. The sharks know to keep swimming.