Sounds like a flimsy excuse to close another post office and further reduce service.

It is a very flimsy excuse, but that is the rot that is wokism. I am sure that the 100 local residents who use this post office are intelligent enough to be able to tell the difference between historical signage in a restored building and the official policy of the USPS.

I think this has more to do with the disgusting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's efforts to crash and burn USPS so he can justify selling it off to UPS and FedEx. Death by thousands of cuts, both figurative and actual.

The Post Office in the NPR story was Montpelier Station VA. Somerset VA PO is 1.8 miles away. It is in Orange County and is not near either of the other Montpeliers in VA.

It's the site of James Madison's Plantation house.

The Post Office was in the Montpelier Sou. Ry. station, 88.8 miles from Washington and 4.1 miles South of Orange. In 1962, locals 35 and 36 made flag stops there. The station dates to 1910 and is open to visitors at the site.

Phil Mulligan

This is hardly the first time the USPS has dealt with "historic but problematic" post office facilities.

I have seen and visited many historic post office structures that raise many issues, many of which the USPS has tried to close or relocate. My hometown post office is a historic structure built during the "New Deal" era, with a WPA mural inside. But they have to compromise with a "back dock" ramp for wheelchair service because it's not ADA compliant. The historic rural storefront post office in Railroad, Pa. (along the Northern Central/Steam Into History line) is less than two miles by road, one mile for the crow flying, from another PO, and the USPS has targeted it for extinction for decades--but every time they have tried, they get even more PO Box rentals and patronage. I've visited the "historic" post offices of Scotland, Pa., Scotland, Md., and Scotland, Va. over the years; two are now gone and the third expanded.

There has long been a trend for the USPS to leave rented locations for their own structures, and over the years the changing usage patterns of mail (read: Postal deficits) and changing national demographics have thoroughly mucked up that campaign.

I've been to this post office and shot 611 and 1218 passing it. It's one of the more charming adaptive-reuse rail stations I have ever seen. But I can see the PO wanting to retreat from what could be a bone of contention in an era when too many people are seeking to be offended and get their glory for complaining about it.

And by the way, this story has spread nationally in many news feeds by now.

I politely disagree. The current wedge issue of CRT and claiming the effects of racism is not a topic for learning is explicitly the opposite of Wokism.

Edit

Hopefully folks are preparing a response for when the Anti CRT crowd come after your Jim Crow car exhibits.

Brian

Yeah, I think I can agree with this statement. The P.O. is located in a museum. Museums present history. I’d like to believe most people are hip to that concept. But you just know that someone is gonna get their knickers in a twist over the history presented and make a big stink out of something that really shouldn’t be ignored in a historical sense. On the flip side, I can understand the PO not wanting to get hit with any fumes from said stink. However, they could have cited only economic reasons for closure and not even poked their pinky into the racial aspect of the historic museum signage. Dumb move on their part for stirring up the pot and getting the stink on themselves.

What do cathode ray tubes have to do with it?