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Brooks Peterson
Monday, July 30, 2001
Let's get busy with those letters, OK?
Got a minute? I hate to bother you, but we have a . . . well, a situation here, and unless you and I do something about it, it could get downright ugly.
No, wait a minute: That's not quite right. To be Brutally Frank (I could be Brutally Ernest if you prefer), I've done my part. You're the one who's falling down on the job.
Don't get the idea I'm enjoying this. Nothing could be further from the truth. Apart from the fact that we go a long way back, you and I, there's the fact that pushiness just isn't in my nature. I'm the kind of guy who stands patiently in the cereal aisle at the supermarket, waiting for the matron ahead of me to complete her cell phone conversation so I can get on with my hunting and gathering.
However, there comes a time when a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. So:
Why the heck aren't you writing? Was it something we wrote? Was it something we said? This broadcast is coming to you directly from the Perplexity Zone.
I'm not kidding. Have you checked out the Letters section on the Opinions Page recently? Pathetic.
Not the quality of the letters, I would hasten to add: They're up to the usual standard, for the most part. But the quantity . . .
Now, granted, summertime around here is not prime time for letters to the editor, or for much of anything else, as far as that goes. That searing heat, that stifling humidity, those shimmering waves that rise up from the concrete to meet you as you venture timorously into the open . . . All you want to do is get home, pop a cool one, and sink into blissful oblivion.
But you know what, buster? We're just the same way. On days like this, you think we want to stagger in to work and set right to work offering trenchant, perspicacious commentary (or, to some of you, preposterous blather) on the issues of the day? I think not. Nothing we'd rather do than slide through the day on cruise control . . .
But then we remember our responsibility to you: our responsibility to inform, to exhort, to illuminate, to irritate, to infuriate, to bloviate - and we do the job.
Is it unreasonable for us to expect you to do your part? I mean, come on: We know you're out there. In the gentle embrace of autumn, in the crisp chill of winter, in the glorious exhilaration of spring, you're there at your word processor - or your typewriter, or your Mont Blanc pen and fine vellum stationery - sharing your wisdom with us, baring your souls to us, and, as often as not, flaying us alive.
And that's OK: That's one of the things we're here for. We're always here for you. Not the least of the services we provide is to function as a kind of spiritual scratching post for the community.
But, neighbors, we can't do it if you don't do your part.
Missing screeds of yesteryear
At this point, with letters arriving in numbers scarcely sufficient to fill half the space allotted for them, we think yearningly of the great correspondences of old. We recall the long-running, spirited but always gentlemanly Letters column debate we had a few years back on the merits of Theosophy; the endless disputation on the merits of the Mary Rhodes Pipeline vs. desalination; of the verbal assaults on errant civil servants; and, inevitably, the anguished cries of sturdy Second Amendment patriots directed at this publication's sinister gun-control agenda.
I even recall the strange correspondence that crossed the greatest divide of them all: the letters we continued to receive for several months from a local lady who had passed on.
We have a great Letters tradition here, friends. But to paraphrase that line about the Tree of Liberty, a great Letters column can thrive only when it is periodically watered by letter-writers' ink.
We really don't want to lay a major guilt trip on you; rather, consider this a friendly reminder - and an invitation: Come home. Come home to the place where everybody knows your name - and your opinions. And may even agree with some of them. This is America, after all. Anything's possible.
Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com
Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com
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© 2001 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a
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