Editorial 1.1, January 1999, by Deirdre Helfferich On A Name The idea of an Ester town paper has long been bubbling in the back of many a local brain, mine included. My sensible resistance to getting involved with newsprint gradually eroded as I contemplated the danger of etymological elimination posed to our fair republic by uncaring outside forces (more on this later), until one day I started fiddling around with layouts on a computer and bam! next thing I knew I was calling people trying to get them to write for the rag. Fairbanks is creeping westward both physically and bureaucratic-ally, threatening the existence of our one legally recognized bastion of Esterdom, that shrine of local news and communication: the Ester Post Office. I received the first hint of this ghastly possibility two years ago, when I changed my listing in the phone book. The phone company wanted to know where I lived, so I told them, and I was informed that I didn’t live where I thought I did, I lived in Fairbanks, and I might not be able to use Ester as a place of residence, because it wasn’t really a place. I found out that the interior of the post office is the only spot where Ester addresses legally exist. Postal jurisdiction places our street addresses in Fairbanks (the old Star Routes). After an interesting conversation I ended up living in Ester, but with a new and disturbing awareness of a menace to the east. Ester’s name is important enough to the people I told my experience to that the mere idea of being listed in the phone book as living in Fairbanks elicited some strenuous protests. Still, a look in the newest telephone directory reveals that many local Esterites, (me, too), have again been plunked willy-nilly into a much larger city whose physical limits are about eight miles from here. A few people I spoke with had the grim and fatalistic view that inevitably, Fairbanks would eventually absorb Ester into itself much as it did College, turning our independent post office into a Fairbanks station in the same way, and gradually reducing Ester to yet just another suburb of Fairbanks. Fairbanks is a fine town, but I’d like it to stay where it is. The legal difference between Ester, a community, and Fairbanks, a home rule city, is essentially that we don’t have a government or schools and they do. We were in the last census and we have a community association, both of which help to distinguish us from being simply a collection of people in a bunch of houses. A second-class city, the next step up from a community, has certain powers (which, if the city chooses, could include taxation), but a borough or the state pays for schools. Fairbanks has legally defined limits, schools, actual stoplights, laundromats, grocery stores, and plenty of those orange streetlights. Most of us work in or near the city. We have friends and relatives who live there. Ester, however, has no legal citihood. But perhaps the true difference is more than a matter of population or being able to see the stars at night. Ester has something that even College, which is also legally defined as a community, doesn’t have. Ester is a town unto itself, with a unique history and a distinct, vibrant village center where the people come together. Fairbanks used to have the latter, but over the years has dissipated itself into a collection of areas with little focus but the roadway (except for downtown, which retains some of the feel of old Fairbanks). Ester has an active community association, a park, a fire department, a post office with our name on the cancellation stamp, a town square, a weather station, a road commission, a historic landmark, and now, a newspaper. Ester is a tough little place, and has existed for a long time without much in the way of official recognition. But then, Fairbanks didn’t used to spread tentacles of highway and houses for miles in all directions. Ester faces the prospect of losing itself nibble by nibble, a process symbolized by the possible transformation of the home town post office into a contract station or worse, an official branch of the Fairbanks office. Money might be saved this way, but local identities are not. Whether the post office moves to Fairbanks shouldn’t determine the fate of our town. For the nation of Esterites who live here, the name of our village has meaning. An independent paper, written by residents of Ester and declaring publication in a sovereign state inside the Fairbanks North Star Borough, ought to make that point. Ester is still on the map. | ||
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