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 reason, to reach the window at the post office (which closes at 4:30, 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 the post office and savings bank tenants, sees an opportunity to rake in more profit from his real estate. Regardless of the opinion of many townspeople, the planning board okays 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 are told to go to Vineyard Haven to pick up our mail. Not everybody is able to drive there and circle around to find a place to park. Then you go into the post office and take a place at the end of a very, very long line in the “Edgartown line.” After standing between 45 minutes to an hour you are finally able to retrieve your mail. How long is this theatre of the obscure to go on? Probably for a long time, as we now learn our post office is to be gutted. And the suggestion that “the old library” may be a temporary solution is ludicrous.

Yes, the Mad Hatter seems to be hosting our tea party and we are suffering from indigestion.

Jean M. Andrews
Edgartown