Herald Boo-Boo Watch part 14

-
The same rookie Herald reporter who gave us Boo-Boo #13 a few days ago has now given us #14. It was located on page A4 of the August 28th issue. The article was about the dedication of a bench by the Carmel post office to honor the late Carmel cartoonist Bill Bates.

As every Carmelite knows, some of Bill Bates' cartoons have graced the walls of the Carmel post office for decades, save for a brief period of time in 2006. On Thursday the Herald printed this explanation for the hiatus:
"Bates' cartoons were taken down from the post office when an art gallery complained it should have the right to hang its artwork there."
I don't know where the reporter got that information, because that's not what happened. To my knowledge no commercial business in Carmel ever claimed the right to display its merchandise at the public post office. 

What really happened was that a US Postal Service "retail standardization team" visited the post office and set plans in place to update the decor of the place to conform to postal service standards. The Bates cartoons were determined to be non-conforming decorations and were removed.

And that's not all. The standardization team also decreed that the old style brass mail boxes with combination locks were to be replaced with modern stainless steel (or was it aluminum?) boxes with keyed locks.

Both of these changes prompted an angry uproar from the townsfolk who liked their old fashioned post office just fine and wanted to preserve its historic character. And how dare they remove Bates' cartoons! To Carmelites, these changes were a huge insult to community traditions.

After city hall got involved the USPS brass backed down. Many of the cartoons went back up on the walls, and the old mailboxes were spared. 

That's what really happened. A local reporter or editor with some institutional knowledge, or a competent rookie who knew how to verify information, should have known that. Fortunately, we have the Carmel Pine Cone to tell the true story this week.



Tags:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The problem with Car Week

-
Image
So another Car Week has come to and gone from the Monterey Peninsula. And as usual the community is divided into two camps. On one side we have people who are frustrated with the traffic, crowds, and noise. The other side is telling these folks to stop whining because "it's good for the economy." The second group has no sympathy for the first, and often goes as far as telling them to move away if they don't like special events and the tourists that come along with them. How did this come about? Car week evolved slowly over several decades. The core event is known as the Concours d'Elegance (which is pronounced properly by maybe half of the local population). The Concours began in 1950 as a single Sunday display of classic automobiles. I remember going there as a kid once, after Sunday School. I watched my dad run his hand over a smoothly polished fender, so I did the same. Suddenly a very cranky man came up behind me saying "NO, NO! FINGERPRINTS!" as...
Read more

Calling the police has gotten harder

-
Image
It has gotten harder to call the police. The last few weeks I have made several attempts to report illegal fireworks to Seaside PD. We've always used the non-emergency number 831-394-6811 to do this, and our call would be promptly answered by a dispatcher who would take the information and immediately enter it into the system. Now one must jump through several hoops with no guarantee the system won't disconnect you before the report is made. And I'm getting fed up. Instead of having our calls answered by a human, a machine will answer, much as it does for every business you call these days. First it tells you that this number is not for emergencies, and if you have an emergency you must hang up and call 911. Then they say it again in Spanish.  Next, you are instructed to choose English or Spanish. Next it tells you that they're busy answering emergency 911 calls and implies that your non-emergency concern is an imposition on their important work. Then the voice asks...
Read more

Oh, Nikki, you're better at math than that.

-
Image
And then there were two. Earlier tonight I watched part of the debate between Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is a jerk, and I can't take him seriously. Haley, on the other hand is a smart gal, and offers some hope for bringing some level of sanity back to the Republican party. But she often dumbs things down to appeal to the simple-minded (mostly Trumpers), and that drives me nuts. Case on point: Haley promised that if elected she would eliminate the federal gasoline tax to reduce the tax burden on working class Americans. Moderator Dana Bash pointed out that the federal gas tax raises over $50 billion annually and is used build and maintain highways and bridges. She then asked Haley how she would pay for those things without it. Haley responded first by evading the question and talking about taxes in general. But eventually she got back around to the gas tax. She employed a classic Republican talking point saying the states collect the...
Read more