Whoa! Six days offline, ten pages of e-mail. Most of it is news bacon--headlines I want to see without, most likely, reading the full story. Some of it is appeals. While I do usually read the appeals, on the grounds that anyone begging for help from a penniless old writer is probably pretty desperate, in ten pages of e-mail you know there have to be some appeals that sound as if the person really does need the help to pay for psychiatric care.
Possibly other correspondents have already seen these...
* "From Change.org re" a prisoner who was released after serving several years on a marijuana charge. "Life outside prison is hard. The prisoner's family are glad to have the person back at home, but now they need your help with money." Really? Well, although I'd buy an apple from this person if I met person on a city street corner, writers who don't even use marijuana need money even more than ex-convicts do.
* "To Amazon: Please make Prime discounts available to all teachers, free of charge." I think Amazon would probably do better to discontinue the Prime discounts altogether--either charge one price for everybody, everywhere, or pin the discounts to bulk purchases where the purchaser is reducing cost by buying multiple items in one shipment--but as long as Amazon is doing the Prime discount thing, and making the discounts available to students, well, yes, teachers earn a lot more money than students. Teachers should be willing to subsidize the discounts for students.
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| I ganked their graphic for their link directly to Amazon Prime. If you buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, it's worth pre-paying all your shipping fees. If you buy that much stuff from Amazon links found at this web site, I should actually get to cash out a commission some day. Happy shopping! |
* From an individual who expects name recognition, but doesn't have it with me: "No Wall, No Hate." I'm guessing this is another wail about the proposed Mexican border wall, coming from another person who was such a passive, dopey (probably overmedicated) child that s/he never learned that a wall is to climb over, just as a hole is to dig. (Yes, we "normal" children learned that the costs of climbing over walls often outweighed the benefits, but still, a wall is to get over. Or under. Or around.)
If I were going to bother signing a petition against the wall, it'd be "No Wall, No Pork." We all know the wall is going to have doors through which people can and will drive overloaded eighteen-wheelers, and Mexicans are going to be winning many pesos getting over, under, around, and through the wall at all points, just on dare bets to show they can, and nobody in their right mind hates Mexicans anyway; law-abiding ones who do stay on their side of the wall will probably be missed. And meanwhile, despite Canada's long history of neighborliness with the U.S...not all Canadians are nice, and not all people entering the U.S. from Canada are Canadians. Wouldn't evildoers love to turn U.S. and Canadian citizens against each other? Hah! They'd love to turn New York and New Jersey against each other.
The next pork barrel (= foolish project that employs a lot of people to whom a public official wants to be profitable, foreign readers) will be a Canadian border wall. And meanwhile, the most evil of the evildoers coming to the U.S. for evil reasons will be arriving by air anyway, and every country already has the technology to build airplanes. News flash: if your purpose is suicide bombing you don't give a flip whether your plane is forced to land in the middle of a cornfield, or maybe a building or a sports event.
Nevertheless, as I sit here in a fast-food joint halfway up a mountain from which only trees keep me from seeing the in-laws not-working on the proposed widening of the bridge that's supposed to be completed some time in the next five years, or make that ten, it would be downright hypocritical for me to denounce the Mexican Wall boondoggle, with this state-size boondoggle practically within sight. Where there is a public budget, there are boondoggles. That goes in the category of "Death & Taxes." At least, while people are building a wall, they're not actively fighting cocaine wars.
* "Seal your pledge to vote for Democrats!" Hoot. I have been known to vote for Democrats, but since Rick Boucher retired I've not necessarily voted for one every year. It's certainly not a commitment. The correspondent was obviously not aware that, in Gate City, even Democratic Party activists aaaalllways vote for Kilgores. Then again, even Republicans got into a groove of voting for Rick Boucher. Democrats would have a chance here if they moved away from the extreme left (who unfortunately seem to be at the top tier of the party organization), toward actually representing the levelheaded, culturally "conservative," populist majority of their party. You can support unions, schools, police, etc., and oppose war, without advocating fiscal insanity.
* "Only a few days left to design the perfect soccer shoes!" I am not making that up. I think it may be possible that Freelancer sent me that message because one of The Nephews, who is sort of geeky, but not nerdy, and into soccer, might think he could design the perfect soccer shoes--for our family's foot shape. If so, I have two things to say to you, young man. One: you're old enough to use Freelancer, and you're old enough to get your own account in your own business name. Suggested time line that leaves room for college: pick your name now, set up your web site this fall, and register with the IRS this winter. Two: the shoes that work for us probably torture other people at least as much as majority-foot-shape athletic shoes do us, so you probably won't win the prize...but why not design a whole line of Wild Turkey Brand shoes for people with "turkey toes"?
* "Will we see you at a demonstration in D.C., a rally in San Diego, a gathering in Texas, etc., this July?" I'm glad those are automated e-mails from political news sites. I'd be concerned about any correspondents who seriously imagined that anybody would leave the cool green mountains to hang out in a well-known Code Red Zone in July. Though I've had no cardiac or hypertensive symptoms yet, I am now an Official Older Lady who Should Not Be Exposed to Extreme Heat...I'm talking about the kind of heat we don't get in Gate City, Virginia.
D.C. memory for those considering the demonstration: Washingtonians walk up escalators, even though Metro used to tack on little signs inviting those who needed permission to "Stand To Right." Standing still on an escalator makes you look like a New Yorker--not good. So on one July morning, on the way to a job on Dupont Circle, I walked past a few people who were drooping and sagging onto the hand rail on the right side of the escalator. I remember thinking, "Yes, it's a hot day, so please get out of the way of those rushing to an air-conditioned office! That sign should specify 'Collapse To Right'!" Washingtonians slow down, when moving briskly up a really long escalator e.g. on Wheaton station, but yes, most of us kept moving at a reasonable pace all the way up the one on Dupont Circle--and doing so did give me a little empathy for the wimps who'd dropped out of the flow and were sprezzing it up on our right. I thought, "Is this the hottest day of the summer?" Came out into the light, still walking, but breathing hard, and saw two different electronic thermostats confirming that the Fahrenheit temperature was either 104 or 105 in the shade.
That was twenty years ago. Washingtonians are generally proud of knowing how to give directions, even being brave enough to walk with visitors, but they don't like delays and they don't like large groups of tourists. And denser population being packed into the city and its suburbs, adding further frustrations for Metro riders, won't be likely to make the local folks friendlier. "Occupying" the city is a good way to generate opposition for your petition! If I supported a cause, I'd just say no to these "March On Washington" things. If I were going to Washington in July, it'd just about have to be to testify in a congressional hearing, or something equally unavoidable.
(Sprezz, a sprezz, to sprezz, sprezzing, etc., come from Italian sprezzatura and refer to "expressive" words, gestures, or behaviors intended to excuse a weak performance by suggesting or exaggerating an injury...the idea is that the person couldn't get away with an outright lie like "I lost the game because I sprained my ankle" but can get away with a little strategic moaning and limping. I used "sprezz" recently in a discussion of a student trying, "Isn't learning other people's languages a form of cultural imperialism?" and was surprised that English-speaking European readers didn't recognize the word. I don't use it often because I observed that, when students are exposed to this word and concept, you suddenly observe a lot less sprezz at their school.)
Anyway: No matter how good your cause may be, no matter even if you were buying all the tickets (and paying for road food of my choice, to be eaten alone, no comments)...in July and August I'm not even tempted to go anywhere hotter than the Blue Ridge Mountains, thanks all the same. 88 degrees is enough.
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