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January 16th, 2009 by Mike Knutson
Rural post offices are special places. That's the message Katie at South Dakota Magazine Buy Maxalt Without Prescription, presented yesterday.
While telling a story about how the postmaster in one small town successfully delivered a letter addressed only with "Under the Water Tower in St. Lawrence", buy Maxalt from mexico, Cod online Maxalt, Katie identifies one of the special qualities of rural communities: people (including post masters) know each other and try to help each other out - even when we forget things like addresses.
Ray Oldenburg (who I wrote about yesterday) believes rural post offices are special for another reason: they are informal gather places where community is built. In his words, they are "third places."
I've never felt that post offices meet the criteria for being "third places." That said, Maxalt to buy, Buy Maxalt online without a prescription, I think older people probably look at post offices differently.
Since reading Oldenburg's The Great Good Place, fast shipping Maxalt, Online buying Maxalt hcl, I've tried to watch our local post office from my office, just across the street. I've noticed that older residents do tend to stop for short conversations -- meeting the main criteria for a third place. Post offices are also easily accessible and people from all walks of life meet there, where to buy Maxalt. Maxalt in india, So, we can check a few more criteria off the list that create third places. But to me, Maxalt in mexico, Purchase Maxalt, post offices just doesn't have the feel that I want a third place to have.
Most likely, post offices once served as more effective third places than they do today, buy Maxalt from canada, Maxalt prescriptions, hence we see older generations still using them as places for conversation.
But I think it also points to another of Oldenburg's key arguments: we've lost many of our third places; and with them we've lost much of our sense of community. I hope that we haven't lost so many of them, over the counter Maxalt, Buy Maxalt online with no prescription, however, that our postmasters stop delivering mail when they don't include proper addresses.
Other posts about post offices and third places:
- "Post Offices, Maxalt from canadian pharmacy, Order Maxalt from United States pharmacy, information, and participation" at the Neighborhoods blog
- "The Dedication of a Small Town Postmaster" at South Dakota Magazine
- List of characteristics of third places - ReImagine Rural
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Tags: post offices, postmaster, Ray Oldenburg, social capita., south dakota magazine, third places
Posted in Community Development, Quality of Life, Rural | Comments (
4 )
January 16th, 2009 at 10:25 am
I’m with you Mike, I definitely don’t think of post offices as third places. I’m actually surprised that so much information out there that talks about them in that way. I wonder at what point in time post offices became more transactional than relational? It could easily be related to changes in communication methods–first telephones, then cell phones, now email, skype, and text messaging. We can connect more readily to specific people, but it also means we don’t build relationships with those along the way.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I find that people in certain small towns tend to be nostolgic about post offices. That’s because in the name of federal efficiency those towns saw their post offices moved to the community outskirts in the 1980s and 1990s. The result was often devestating to downtown commerce. But that’s a separate issue from that of third places. I think post offices can be considered only “gateway” third places. You run into a friend or two there, and then you decide to find a spot more conducive to an extended visit. One way urban and suburban places seem to usually beat small towns to the punch is by suggesting their malls and downtowns are full of third places. Think of how you see cities promoted by images of people gathered at tables on a sidewalk, or walking together for exercise through a mall, or enjoying a street musician who has transformed the most unlikely space into a third place. It’s always implied, it seems to me, that the people photographed enjoy one another and their community, and have enough leisure time to seek out those third place experiences, or to stop whatever they’re doing when they encounter them spontaneously. It could be argued that plenty of small towns have as many third places per capita as their urban counterparts. But rual communities need to think of those spots as such, and grant “permission” to residents to embrace leisure time. Of course, leisure time can’t be taken for granted in those communities where most people have to travel elsewhere for work, or where they have to work more than one job just to pay the bills.
January 18th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Paul,
I had never thought of the idea that one could run into a friend at a post office and then go somewhere else for deeper conversation. Interesting. For me, post offices hold a utilitarian purpose — get my mail. Again, I wonder if it’s generational.
January 18th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I definitely think there is something generational in the way people think about post offices. My daugters, ages 23 and 28, don’t really give post offices a second thought. For me they were important, but for my grandmother the tiny Hager City, Wisconsin post office was the very heart of the community. She knew every postmaster over the decades by his first name.