Tag: #postalservice

Posted in Non-fiction, Politics

Protect Your Voting Rights!

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

american flags and pins on white background

Americans today have an issue with maintaining their right to have free and fair elections. There are issues about voter suppression; specifically, the defunding of the postal service and voting by mail. There is also evidence that Russia is, once again, trying to manipulate our 2020 Presidential election.

In the 2016 Presidential elections, it is known that Vladimir Putin of Russia and his intelligence agency tried to manipulate the election and succeeded, at least to some extent. The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Marco Rubio (R-FL), knows that Putin is trying to do it again in the 2020 Presidential election. Putin is, and always has been, in favor of bringing down American democracy.

Russian interference is affecting your voting rights.

Several states have had 100% voting by mail for a number of years. Those states are Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. There has been less than 1/2% fraud. Despite that, Trump is against the vote by mail option, even though many people prefer to vote by mail this year due to the spread of COVID19. In the face of the facts that there has been virtually no fraud in the elections of those five states, he insists there is fraud. Then recently, he allowed the state of Florida to vote by mail. But no other state! Why, if he believes, fraud is likely? Trump is trying to suppress the vote because he knows that fewer voters are always better for Republican’s running for office than more voters.

Voter suppression through the vote by mail option is affecting your voting rights.

The U.S. Postal Service has been operating on a shoestring. Trump is trying to defund the postal service by installing one of his cronies as Postmaster General. The new Postmaster General fired the top personnel and any overtime work has stopped. Postal workers have been encouraged to leave mail undelivered and work shorter hours. Trump’s goal is to make sure that the Postal Service can’t handle the load of mail-in ballots which is another voter suppression tactic.

Voter suppression by defunding the United States Postal Service is affecting your voting rights.

Trump does nothing to stop Putin’s antics regarding our votes. He is actively trying to suppress our votes by defunding the Postal Service and trying to stop vote by mail.

Is this a man who should be President of the United States? Americans need to take back their right to vote.

Posted in Blog Series

Travel Florida: I Was Only Going to the Post Office

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

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Copyright Rosemary Carlson 2017

And not the Post Office above! The Post Office you’re looking at in the picture is the original post office on Pine Island, built in 1902. I didn’t mean to visit it today, although I meant to visit it eventually. I just meant to go to the new Post Office, near St. James City on Pine Island, to mail something and pick up mail. I asked the postal service worker if the post office was open on Saturday. He said no and proudly explained to me that only one post office on the island is open on Saturday and that is the original Pine Island Post Office in Pineland, another community on the island. He instructed (instructed?) me to run on down to Pineland, another small Pine Island Community, and take a look since he knew I was new to the island. How could I refuse?

Off I went to Pineland, just about a ten mile drive. I turned off the main Pine Island road and found myself with palm tree farms on one side of the road and a mango plantation on the other side of the road, both crops grown on Pine Island and with stories of their own. After driving about three miles and fearing I was lost, I rounded a curve and literally had to screech to a halt. There, in front of me, practically in the middle of the road was the building you see above.

So I went inside. This little building could tell a lot of stories. It is only there because in the late 1800s there was a freeze that took out most of the orange groves in northern Florida. Many grove owners moved south and bought land to establish new groves. A grove owner, Minta Moore, came to Pine Island in 1902 when only about three dozen people lived here. That family bought acreage for orange groves and established the first Pine Island post office in a community they established and called Pineland. The original lockboxes are still in that little building and they are combination boxes.

The postal service worker is new. She, like me, came to Pine Island on vacation. She’s from Delaware. She loved it so much that she applied for a job at two of the Pine Island post offices. The little old post office at Pineland hired her. She was thrilled to move here. She, like me, has no family in the area. No friends in the area. Like me, she felt the magic of Pine Island. So do many people here.

We like to keep it a secret so I’m only telling you.