Letters to the Editor
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@knowIknowu
Please, stop embarrassing yourself. Racism is racism, even if it's self-directed.
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@ know1uknow
I don't know what DurianJoe means by self-directed racism.
I thought your answer rocked.
The only thing I have to add to this conversation, and someone may have already covered it in the numerous previous letters and I missed it, was regarding the elderly in general. I have a 95 year old grandmother, so my observations are based on her. In this society, the elderly lose influence and control. As physical and sometimes mental abilities decline, they are forced to rely more and more on other people. My grandmother, a very independent woman, hates this. She hates that she cannot drive a car, do the work in her yard she once did, go and get her own groceries, etc, etc.
Based on this, my only suggestion to the LW would be: If you offer to help your neighbor, let her be in control of the situation. Let her tell you what she wants. LISTEN TO HER. If she wants you to butt out, you should butt out and consider that you are giving her the gift of being able to control one thing in her world, by virtue of your doing what she asked.
If you cannot resist, you can leave the door open and say, Should you ever change your mind, just please let me know. That way the ball, the control, is in her court.
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@kitchengirl
>LW, if your "not-white" (by the way - WTF is that about?) neighbor isn't concerned about the oleanders, why are you?<
What it's about is white folks moving into a African-American/lower-middle-class neighborhood and automatically assuming they have the right to "clean things up" because "those people" don't know any better and are naturally dirty, anyway. I can't find the article right now, but the NYT had a piece a while back about white yuppies and black residents going head-to-head in Harlem over "cultural differences." In that case, the newly-arrived yuppies were using the "picked to death by legal ducks" method of filing endless legal complaints against their black neighbors for doing traditional neighborhood things--hanging out on the block or playing music. The LW's horrible neighbor is a more benevolent (but no-less-poisonous) variety of that kind of arriviste.
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Sorry--I meant @Kansasgirl...
Yeesh...
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I'll second that...
>Planting a hedge on SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY is NOT right. It's not appropriate behaviour and just "letting it go" only encourages the snob across the street in thinking its her right to rearrange the neighborhood as she sees fit.<
And said snob most certainly _will_--and will get even more picky, interfering, and insensitive in the process. People like her don't stop unless someone draws a line in the sand. If she wanted a perfect neighborhood, why isn't she living in a planned/gated community or something?
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@wellhowdy
>But there is a price to be paid for being less than upper middle class in this society.<
Really? So anyone who has a career that doesn't pay googobs of money--or who has lost their money for whatever reason should resign themselves to being treated like crap?
>Or that maybe having her the value of her house depreciated by thousands of dollars isn't just about snobbishness but about defending an asset that quite probably took many years of hard work to attain?<
It sounds as if Renegade Neighbor just moved into the neighborhood. As well, doesn't the elderly lady who has sweated and saved to keep her house have any rights, even though she may not be as dedicated to upkeep as RN?
>Or that maybe planting shrubs in the old woman's yard was a constructive way to resolve a problem that could have been resolved in a troublesome way like calling Code Enforcement or filing a nuisance lawsuit?<
Planting unasked-for plants on someone else's lawn is not constructive--it's trespassing. And insulting to boot.
>For those of us who have struggled damn hard for a lifetime just to hang on by a slim thread to a meager lifestyle and to provide for our families, class warfare is manifested in many forms.<
Yep, because your rights automatically trump everyone else's. It doesn't matter how hard everyone else might have worked to get their property--you and yours should be allowed to run roughshod willy-nilly over those folks because you are more financially-worthy. :P
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@ know1uknow
I second noneofmybusiness's comment. I think your reply rocks.
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About the Missing SYA
Hi, about the published column and accompanying letters pages that were removed from the site -- I know it is off-topic, but since the question has been raised here, I thought I'd post here.
First, I'll just tell what happened.
The day after the piece went up I wanted to write to the letter writer personally, to say I appreciated her forthrightness and sympathized with her situation. Frankly, I felt that my response had been mean and sarcastic and wanted to sort of apologize. To find her original letter, I searched my mailbox for a bit of text. When I found her original letter, I sorted by sender, to see if she had written me anything else previously. I found that she had written me two letters closely together in time. The first letter was her question. The second letter, written quickly afterward, implored me not to publish the first. I realized I had missed her request not to publish. It was very clear what we had to do, from an ethical standpoint.
We very rarely remove material, and never simply because it offends; we only do it when publishing it is clearly indefensible. In this case, our obligation was clear.
People often write and then change their minds, and I withdraw their letters from the eligible pool. It presents a clerical complication. I have long been worried that this would happen. We are now planning to change our procedures so it doesn't happen again.
Now, someone mentioned that in writing to advice-at-salon.com there was a box that gave you a choice whether your letter is for publication or not. It's that way when you write a letter to the editors not for publication -- http://www.salon.com/about/letters/index.html. But if you write for advice, following the link on the column, you don't get such a box any more. I chose some years ago to bypass that box and have a direct "mailto" link at the bottom of my column. You can see it there, at the bottom, where it says "Ask for advice or make a comment to Cary Tennis." The word "advice" is a mailto link. It just opens an e-mail window. I avoided the other device because I wanted to make writing to me easier and less formal. But now we are rethinking that.
Strangely enough, I had second thoughts about this letter immediately after I put it in for publication. I sometimes do. It was an odd coincidence that the very letter I had second thoughts about turned out to be one which should never have been published in the first place.
But the content was not the issue. The letter writer asked us to withdraw the letter soon after she sent it, and I simply missed her letter. When I found it, we did what we had to do.
So now I have to be much more careful, until we have a new system in place.
We don't like to remove material, and only rarely do it. In this case, we had made a mistake and had an obligation to make it right.
If there are more questions about this, I will try to answer them.