Letters to the Editor
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back in the stone age
after we dropped a letter into the mailbox, we couldn't get it back no matter how desparately we pled with the postmaster.
We learned to live with our actions and think hard before making unretractable moves.
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@deidre
>First, isn't this issue (class boundaries and gentrification) exactly the same as the one in this week's Law & Order episode? <
Yup. IIRC, that episode was a combination of the gentrification battle going on up in Harlem--and a current Long Island case of a black father who shot a white kid when the latter rolled up on his lawn to threaten the former's son.
>Seems like there's a lot of that going around in the good ol' US of A.<
You know, there are times I really think this country will finally wipe itself out via its citizens trying to impose their ideas of perfection on everyone else. Already the US has lost substantial innovation and creativity because people don't really want to pull together any more. I guess folks waging war over oleanders is the next logical step.
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re: "a little short story from the South"
Hey, HFK, I was thinking maybe Eudora Welty or Flannery O'Connor. But you know what? I am from the South myself and I am sensitive to the kind of prejudice you seem to be talking about. And I don't think just being from the South gives me some special rights, like if you're black you can use certain epithets and things like that. it didn't occur to me. I just didn't think it was so offensive. it just seemed like a little short story set in the south. I didn't mean the racial prejudice angle so much as the strange, secretive method, like stories I used to hear of surreptitious things rural people would do. But whatever. I do agree that people who are not from the South are often wrong about the South. But I meant what I said. It sounds like a short story set in the South. Though maybe it happened in L.A. I don't know where it happened. I associate oleander with the south, too, though I guess they grow everywhere.
Anyway, just saying, born in Virginia, raised in Florida, family all in the South, southern through and through, didn't think it was such a bad thing to say. sorry you were offended. don't live in the south anymore. live in san francisco. big deal. gotta go weed the garden.
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Letters, we get letters
Cary, I actually wrote you a letter and had just those second thoughts. It's difficult to have a real question and really desire the input of the "masses" (instead of the vacuum of silence because you can't confide in your friends) and to express it without revealing particulars of one's situation so that it's transparent to anyone close to it.
I, too, asked you not to publish - a day after sending the letter - because I hadn't couched the situation well enough to disguise it or the players.
Sometimes in writing the question down, in expressing it and then having to re-read it a couple of times, we see the answer coded there. "Short Hubby"'s LW surely realized after reading her letter back a couple of times, and sleeping on it, just how it sounded. Maybe she doesn't even feel the way she sounded in that letter. Maybe listening to herself brought forth a flood of love and affection for her husband and she realized what a treasure he is.
Who knows? I'm not sure there's a way to avoid publishing letters from LWs who later have second thoughts, but I'm glad mine was not printed, and I can see why this LW had her second thoughts.
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cary
I never knew you were born in va, cuz
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Elderly People
If she doesn't want help, leave her alone. She might like the oleanders. Leave her alone. Stop meddling. Let the meddlers meddle. Besides, one thing about old people is they pass away eventually. Just be grateful it isn't a house full of screaming children with yuppie parents. I'll take junker cars and sofas any day over noise and entitlement.
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Not helpful, but entertaining to consider
I like the notion of sneaking over to the oleander perpetrator's house and planting something really entertaining, like a blackberry hedge or, to continue the southern feel of the tale, some kudzu trellises.
Tell her that, from where you stand, it appeared she needed some help pulling her garden together and you felt the addition of some overwhelming cancerous shrubbery was just the ticket.
Sure, it's petty and wrong, but isn't it fun to consider?
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Cary
Thanks for responding about the missing letter. I am an avid reader and though I don't normally write in, I really enjoy the column and everyone's comments. :) I also really like that you do things like this-- that you seem to care about people wanting to know what was up, with that particular letter's removal. Good answer. Thanks!
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Mind your own business
Just like your gardener neighbor should have minded hers.
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re: your neighbors
I find your oleander planting neighbors utterly disgusting. If i had an outdoor cat, i'd try to sic it on the plants; otherwise, i'd sneak out under cover of darkness and tear those offensive plants up.
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Luckily we have progressed beyond the stone age: Cary did the right thing
There is no question that retracting the column was the only ethical choice. I laud mattielisbon for her menschliche understanding for the LW.
As for those still expressing hard-hearted sentiments like "she should have known" or "she should still pay for her actions" - oh, please. Sounds to me like you are pouting because your punching bag has been taken away and you don't know when and if you'll be offered another vicitm that is as much "fun" +scoff+.
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Lousy advice
First, you admit how culturally/economically/racially-charged such "camouflage" is. Then you tell the LW to "let it go, let it go, let it go".
What's that quote again: all that's necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.
You just told the LW to do nothing. Let the invasion continue. It's not such a big deal. They're just poor, old, sick, marginalized black people, and it doesn't matter if their property is invaded because they have no rights anyway. (Shouldn't they have learned that by now?)
If the invader had someone come in and plant a row of 8' cacti on her property during the night, would she mind? What if it happened to the LW? Would she "let it go, let it go, let it go"? She'd probably be calling her lawyer.
Does it make it OK that the invader planted a nice, flowery species? Does it make it better that the victims are so disenfranchised they are too powerless to do anything to change it? Hey, don't we know what's better for them than they do? Aren't we really doing them a favour?
Barbara Bush made some comments after Katrina: the black people relocated in Northern cities were being presented with an opportunity they never would have had at home. In other words, they should be grateful for being permanently dislocated. What is wrong with this statement? What is the definition of "home"? How is it that wealthy white ladies get to determine it?
Jesus, guys! Wake up! How can you let Cary get away with his weak, passive, all-accepting, horribly destructive "advice", meant only to make the LW bury her conscience and stifle her sense of what is right? Something honorable was trying to come through here, and Cary buried it in the interests of feeling "OK about yourself".
What happens when you literally hide something unwanted, something secretly shameful, even contemptible? Isn't this what dysfunctional families do with abuse, alcoholism, and other traumatic patterns? Hide it, and it goes away. The message is clear: we're ashamed of you, so ashamed we have to literally erase your presence. What a great thing to tell your neighbors, not to mention the world.