To the Editor:
It seems that we in Edgartown are sitting at Alice’s tea party, and things are indeed getting curiouser and curiouser. For years we have become used to standing in long lines, regardless of the season, to reach the window at the Post Office (which closes at 4:30 pm, an inconvenient time for those who work). The employees are doing the best they can while being understaffed. The owner of the building, who must be realizing a considerable rent from his postal and savings bank tenants, sees an opportunity to rake in some more profit from his real estate. Regardless of the opinion of many townspeople, the planning board OKs the plan to add apartments over the building, and to reconfigure the parking lot into a myriad of fender-bender opportunities.
Now we have no main Post Office in Edgartown. We were told to go to Vineyard Haven to pick up our own mail. Not everybody was able to drive there and circle around to find a place to park. Then you went into the Post Office and took a place at the end of a very, very long line: the “Edgartown line.” After standing between 45 minutes and an hour, you were finally able to retrieve your mail.
How long is this theater of the absurd to go on? Probably for a long time, as we now learn that our own Post Office is to be gutted. And now the “old library” is the temporary solution.
Yes, the Mad Hatter seems to be hosting our tea party, and we are suffering from indigestion.
Jean M. Andrews
Edgartown
