Letters to the Editor
commandax
Published Letters: 17 Editor's Choice: 5
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Somewhere in a small town, someone is building a stone wall, just because it's beautiful.
[Read the article: Hoe, hoe, hoe]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think Garrison is saying that, having had the experience of working hard, knowing the bodily exhaustion of a day spent working the soil for your own sustenance, and the connection with the earth and your ancestors and your own physical being that it brings, strengthens the spirit and builds the character for other different and more difficult challenges that will come in life.
I think Garrison is saying that appreciating the simple things in life at an early age--understanding the work put into the production of a potato, grasping the teat that produces the milk for the morning cereal, piecing the quilt that lies upon one's cold winter bed--rather than being cosseted, programmed and groomed as are most of our middle-class youth of today, tends to create an personality in a growing human that is flexible, resourceful and extremely conscious of and grateful for one's blessings.
Also, there's nothing wrong with small-town America, and there's no reason to be nostalgic for it. It's still here. Just drive out of your suburban cul-de-sac or take that unknown exit on your regular cloverleaf, and you'll find a small town within an hour or so. In it will be people of infinite variety: B&B-owning lesbians, grizzled carpenters with immense gravity and honor, gun-toting liberal-baiting bear hunters, 8th generation female farm owners, fishermen who debate politics endlessly, tired waitresses with MBAs, former career-military landscape photographers, beer-hauling truckers with a vast knowledge of great literature via audiobook, retired internet entrepreneurs starting a llama farm, glass-working horse-loving hippies named Sundance, ex-chemists slowly turning 100 clear-cut acres back into an ecological wonderland, mystery novelists whose bestselling series takes place in your small town... their diversity is endless.
Unfortunately for our small-town communities, where people still actually know each other and look out for each other (and where your neighbor might drop off a bucket with a couple of lobsters she just caught that morning, just to be friendly) Wal-Mart (and to a lesser extend K-mart and the other large department stores that are built out on the land on which we used to farm) has destroyed not only the center of almost every American town, but the ability of its residents to make a living running a family hardware store, shoe store, drugstore, etc.. In most communities, the only option after your business has gone under due to the installation of a Wal-Mart superstore nearby is to take a low-wage job stocking shelves at the same Wal-Mart that murdered your hopes.
So the greatest tragedy of small-town America today is that our kids have to move away to the city to find a job that will give them any sense of self-worth. And it's true, we don't sing enough anymore. Or we sing, but only when we are by ourselves. We don't read enough. We watch too much televison, which cheapens our intellectual life, and makes us boring at parties. We are fed flavorless, spongy orange vegetable matter and accept helplessly that what we are eating is a tomato. We allow ourselves to become caught up in meaningless trivial obsessions that look vapid and foolish five years later.
Meanwhile, life goes on. Somewhere in a small town, someone is building a stone wall, just because it's beautiful. It's also extraordinarily hard work, but it's worth it. It will stand for generations as a testament to human endeavour. Also, it will get the rocks out of the field that you've been trying to put to potatoes for the last few years, but couldn't plow properly because a glacier dropped 10 tons of stone on it a few million years ago. So that's good.
What have you done that's worth remembering today?
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Dean pulled our fat out of the fire.
[Read the article: Howard Dean, vindicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Howard Dean deserves a medal. The man has courage, resolution, intelligence, and the kind of backbone few politicians could summon even when they were young and idealistic. Who cares if he's a graceful speaker? When you're telling the truth, you don't need to say it pretty.
If we had 50 candidates for higher office - in any party - with Howard Dean's finer qualities, our country would live up to its promise. These people exist, but most of them turn away from politics, disgusted with the glad-handing and corruption. The citizens of this nation need leaders who listen to everyone, not just the ones who live in the politically advantageous state, and not just the ones writing the biggest check. Negotiation is necessary in politics, but ethics should never be part of a compromise. A little application of the Golden Rule wouldn't be out of order.
Dean was the first political candidate who ever inspired me, and I'll be sending him checks as long as he stands in the political line of fire, screaming the truth back into the malestrom of deception, bigotry and exploitation that has swallowed our government and media. And quite frankly, I don't care how loud he has to scream.
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Just saw the movie.
[Read the article: "Stranger Than Fiction"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It was great. Fun, well made, well acted, mildly quirky, with a lot of heart. Not overly self-conscious or weighed down by Meaning. Will Ferrell was appropriately restrained, portraying a everyman flummoxed by the realization that he's been living his life on autopilot. And Maggie Gyllenhall was adorable. So to hell with Stephanie Zacharek, who has a bizarre ability to be bored or annoyed by just about every interesting movie out there. Maybe she should find something to do with her life that doesn't involve having to watch so many tedious movies. Perhaps she'd like to try her hand at a little of that "straightforward, unvarnished storytelling" and see if she could write a worthier script. Then maybe Salon can find someone to write these reviews who actually likes watching movies.