Save the Greenwood Post Office

This U.S. Postal Service is actively considering closing Greenwood Post Office. The immediate plan is to move both the mail “sorting” functions and service of our Rural Delivery Route to Crozet. This is undoubtedly an interim step that will undermine the level of service currently provided through our Greenwood P.O. and ultimately lead to its full closure.

Should this occur, it is entirely possible that our “Greenwood, Va. 22943” mailing address will disappear forever from the Postal Service landscape and, with it, a vital part of our identity as a small rural community. It is absolutely essential that we take immediate action with a loud and unified voice to oppose these initial steps and to let the appropriate authorities know how much our local Post Office means to us!

We have scheduled a meeting to be held in the Parish Hall of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church (located on U.S. Rte. 250 here in Greenwood) on Wednesday, April 11 at 7 p.m. Please attend this important meeting to discuss how we can let the USPS know that we do not want them to change or close our Post Office!!

Be looking for a petition to support our post office. It will be available at the post office and available at the meeting for signatures. If you would like to help us circulate the petition before the meeting, or help coordinate efforts now, please email or call Scott Peyton at (540) 456‐6400 or Scott@jtsamuels.com, or Mike Knasel at (540) 456‐8899 or Mike@Stagebridge.net.

This meeting and information is put together by concerned local citizens and is not connected to the USPS in any way.

Scott Peyton
Greenwood

Dear Crozet friends and neighbors,

We would like to thank you very much for your faithful patronage of Pesto Mediterranean Grill over the last 3 1/2 years  You all made us successful. We have thoroughly enjoyed serving our hometown and getting to know your families.  We come from a long line of restauranteurs. The Ballas family has owned many local restaurants—Tiffany’s Seafood, The Greek Village, Jak ‘n Jil, Pig Tails BBQ, College Inn and many others. Pesto Mediterranean Grill was our most recent. My wife Athena and I decided to sell Pesto and change our career paths.  We are going to take time to enjoy our children and take a much needed rest.

The new owners are wonderful, local people. We would love for you to continue supporting the restaurant. They have exciting new plans for the place that I’ll let them tell you about. Thanks again from the bottom of our hearts for the countless orders and catering you all placed. We wish you all the best.

John and Athena Ballas
Ivy

Natural Flea Control

Regarding the article about fleas [“Gazette Vet,” March 2012]: Some of the commercial flea and tick products have directions on the package that say “use gloves when applying these products to your dog or cat.” If you have to wear gloves to apply them, are they safe for the pet or the family living with the pet? There have been many published articles regarding the active and inert chemicals in these products, which have been reported to have caused adverse immune system reactions in some pets.

There are ALL NATURAL ways to combat fleas!

1. Organic essential oil combinations, used directly on the pet or combined in a spray made with aloe vera juice and water, work very well on fleas, ticks and skin conditions resulting from insect irritation. They are much less expensive than chemical products.

2. Many progressive vets confirm that fleas will not live on a pet that has no yeast in the body. Deleting white rice, rice bran, beet pulp, wheat, corn or soy and replacing those ingredients with good quality meat protein works wonders and is not expensive. If fleas hate a pet with a healthy immune system, then a good diet is the best defense!

In some cases, we realize stronger products may be professionally recommended for extremely aggressive flea infestation.

However, we would encourage you to consider offering holistic, all natural options to your readers as an alternative to chemicals.

Pattie Boden
Crozet

Please Respect Handicap Parking 

Like many Crozet parents, I have a child who plays baseball for the Peachtree league. Most of my son’s practices and games are at Crozet Park, which can get extremely crowded as parents drop off and pick up their kids, or when they arrive for the games. SOCA uses the same park, so it can truly become a traffic nightmare. Without fail, almost every time I arrive at the park, at least one if not both of the two handicap spots near the lower baseball and soccer fields are taken by cars without handicap tags. There are signs clearly posted on the fence in front of these spaces, but many people disregard them altogether, especially if they’re just dropping off or picking up their kids, because “I’m only here for a minute.”

As a person who IS handicapped and has a legitimate handicap tag, I can assure you that that “minute” matters greatly to a handicapped person who arrives before you have vacated the space that doesn’t belong to you. It means I then have to park farther away, sometimes quite a bit farther away, and on a bad day, that can be a real problem for me. I either have to do a longer walk than I comfortably can, or wait until you leave the space (and I don’t know how long that will be, so I often just park farther away). On a good day, I park as close as I can while leaving the handicap space for someone who truly needs it. There are many of us who do need those spaces, either for ourselves or for our parents who come to see their grandchildren play. Some of these people are your friends and you STILL park in those spaces!

On occasion I have approached the offending party if s/he is present and doesn’t look like a hostile person, but more often than not, I run the risk of an unpleasant confrontation with someone who thinks I’m making a big deal out of nothing, that I have a lot of nerve to tell them they can’t park there. Well, the LAW says they can’t park there, with fines ranging from $100 to $500 per infraction. I have been verbally assaulted by people I’ve confronted (and I am always polite) and have on one occasion had to call the police. A few of us have even parked our cars behind the offending parties’ cars, blocking them in, to get the point across. I am entitled to call the police every time someone parks there who shouldn’t, but they don’t always arrive before the person leaves, and they’ve got better things to do. It is an added stressor that we don’t need, when we have to deal with this every time we come to the park.

So please, Crozet citizens, have some respect, both for the law and for your less able-bodied neighbors and even friends, and do not park in the handicap spaces if you are not entitled to do so. Not even for a minute. I can tell you that living with a disability is hard enough. Having those spaces available to us makes it easier for us to get out and about and enjoy watching our children play at sports. Your taking them away from us makes it harder. Just don’t do it.

Thank you,

A Crozet Parent
(Name Withheld Upon Request)