Here's the latest on the North Egremont post office: The USPS folks in Great Barrington called Craig Elliott last week and said they were not going to close him down after all (at least not now). That may have resulted from one or two politically connected Egremonters getting the ear of Senator Kennedy. (Earlier attempts to enlist the aid of Congressman Olver fell on his deaf ears. Let's get rid of this bozo.) But if you have a box at Craig's place, you still have to change your address to "223 Egremont Plain Road, PMB xxx". The Great Barrington post office reportedly is starting to bounce mail addressed to "Box xxx", so why take a chance?

If you do that address change on the Internet, you'll find many web sites bounce your attempt if you don't list the new address their way (which they often get from the USPS). I've found they often want "Road" abbreviated to "Rd" and they insist on "PMB" being "Pmb". Since I think they get those required changes from the USPS, they ought to be okay.

One last thing: The USPS says they won't reinstall the mailbox on the outside of the building, so you still won't be able to drop off mail outside store hours.