Friends of the Library declared profit seekers by postal clerk

["Tim Hillebrand" <thillebr@moscow.com>]

A postal clerk at the Moscow post office has taken it upon herself to
declare unilaterally that the Friends of the Library are not part of the
Library and, therefore, not a non-profit organization. For two days (so far)
she has held up a bulk mailing of the Friends newsletter announcing our book
sale April 10th at Eastside MarketPlace. The revenue from the book sale is
used to finance the children's' summer reading program in which we
anticipate 1500 kids will participate this summer. When we eventually found
out that our mailing had been held up, the director of the library and the
president of the board of directors rushed over to inform the misguided,
officious clerk that the Friends were very much a part of the Library and
that the Library depended on them for many extras that the limited budget
does not allow and that this mailing was very important to the community as
a whole. Additional letters of testimony, mission statements, and brochures
did not satisfy the omnipotent clerk. Now she wanted minutes from the board
meetings showing the relationship between the Friends and the Library. Sadly
no such minutes exist because the Friends have been serving the Library's
extra needs since before the turn of the century and any such minutes are no
longer extant. Of course it was impossible to call an impromptu board
meeting to generate such minutes. We even offered to cross out the line,
"Friends of the Library" on every single piece. But that would not satisfy
the petty tyrant either. So, the clerk demanded that we pay the full price
for the mailing and denied us the economical non-profit bulk rate. This
extra money of course will be taken from the money that would have gone to
the children for the summer reading program. I wonder how such a person
measures the success of her day. No doubt she goes home after a hard day of
harassing postal customers and says to herself, "Well, I stopped another
non-profit organization from doing some good for the community today, and
this time I almost screwed the kids out of their summer reading program-at
least they won't get as much money as they could have had. Think I'll have a
cool one to celebrate." Is the post office the enemy of children now, or is
it just this power hungry, petty bureaucrat clerk who wishes to harm the
children of our community? We'll see how the battle continues as we are made
to jump through the hoops of postal bureaucracy to prove that the Friends of
the Library are not a profit making scam using the post office to defraud
innocent people somehow.

The term "Postal" takes on a new dimension. Of course the initial "PO"
stands for post office and the "stal" is short for stall. I look forward to
the day when we don't have to be held hostage by  the post office, a day
when all communication can be conducted via email. Perhaps we should only
accept members for Friends of the Library who have email. What the post
office needs is some serious competition and a sense of commitment to the
community they serve. In case you would like to see our newsletter before
the post office gets around to delivering it, you can check it out at
http://www.synergetics.org/FriendsWS/index.html.

Hope to see you at the annual book sale at Eastside MarketPlace on Saturday,
April 10th.  You can help the kids this summer and get some great books at
incredible prices at the same time-even if the post office doesn't want to
help our kids learn to read.