Not all of the angry, caustic, or hate-filled responses that I received over my New Homeless series for the Las Vegas Sun in late 2010 came in the form of online comments; some people actually sat down and wrote letters that were forwarded to me by my editor at the Sun. Here is a letter from early December from a local named Deborah. Click images to enlarge.
A quotation from The Great Gatsby:
“I hope she’ll be a fool–that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool… You see, I think everything’s terrible anyhow… And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 1
Dear Deborah Woodbury,
Your left-leaning print reminded me of a love letter from one of my daughters meant to cheer me up during a brief period of deep depression when I was mired so deeply in my anxieties about graduation from college, about that thesis lying on our kitchen table waiting for me to proof and retype it and sadness about the kids at Kent State shot down by Ohio National Guardsmen the day before that I had to be coaxed into putting on my tennis shoes, taking her by the hand and leading her out to the track for our morning run. Bless that child–now a fifty-year-old aviator–for her left-leaning letter and for walking with me to the track. No sooner had we finished the first two hundred meters of our daily run than my mind was in a better place. We finished our morning mile, went back to the house and made posters which I tacked to four-foot lengths of lath and together we hiked first to the Campus Elementary School, where she displayed her sign and I went on to the Student Union, where I displayed mine. Our signs said this: I AM ON STRIKE. She said later that evening that it was fun. Half of her classmates had run back home and made their own picket signs. Several dozen students at the Student Union did the same and together we disrupted “business as usual” on the campus then called Oregon College of Education. For several days following we witnessed spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm in a staid old college. It was almost as good as living poetry. It was “THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY,” 1970.
Thanks for this reminder, Rodger. I have more stuff on the clipboard, but I’ll paste it later, if you don’t mind.
Funny, isn’t it, how quotations tend to stick to the clipboard and get pasted into more than one post. . .talk about redundant!
I think it’s not a hateful letter. It’s someone reaching out. I would guess that she’s seen some alcoholic trauma in her life and so she’s quick to scapegoat it–which is very usual for people in some kind of recovery or for people living with a loved one in some kind of recovery. I tend to have a soft spot for cases like this but if someone wrote that letter to me, I’d probably write her back and encourage her to blog.
Joseph,
I said “angry, caustic, or hate-filled”; I would put Deborah’s letter in the caustic category. It’s also dripping with condescension.
I agree that if one reads carefully it is laced with recovery-speak, yet those who bagged on that part of the story failed to read that my past visits to the Fiesta across the street were an occasional outing, not an every day affair, and, further, it was a summer/hot weather escape that I no longer indulge with the onset of winter (who wants a frozen margarita when it’s 40 degrees outside?) It’s a fool’s errand to isolate and focus on that small sliver of the story.
I don’t need Deborah or anyone else lecturing me on the Great Depression or the economic marginalization of writers in society — as Orwell wrote, “It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.”