I’ve written my three congresspersons a letter each week for three, almost four, weeks in a row now. I don’t know if my actions are doing any good (they may be infuriating their secretarial staff), but I’m having great satisfaction in expressing my opinions. [Actually, my congressman did write one letter politely setting me straight on a few things, and I answered him in kind.] And this is what we constituents should be doing, regardless of what we believe. Those people are in office at our behest. If we express our opinions in large enough numbers, should it happen that, hm, they might change their minds about a few things or find themselves out on the pavement? Acting collectively, our actions could become a very powerful thing.

I may have overdone it last time, the English teacher having become enraged by the onslaught of change overcoming our language. The truth is that English is at our disposal to be used in the way that we see fit. Grammar books usually are written with a nod toward long-time usage, finally giving in to what ordinary people have fashioned of it. One day there may be no “their” there; the word may be spelled only one way, and it will be up to the reader to figure out its meaning (like most teachers must do with regard to their students’ writing). One day “bust” may become a perfectly acceptable way (maybe we’re
. . . there, there) to express that something has broken or burst. One day “Me and my friends” may replace “My friends and I” (maybe we’re really there, damn the grammar books). After all, ain’t “me” more important than me friends? One day “If I were
. . .”—normally used to express a hypothetical situation (the subjunctive voice)—will become “If I was.” Why? B/c (texting for “because”) it’s simply easier to remember. Why must we have all these rules we have to remember for the rest of our lives? Isn’t the important thing to communicate and get our ideas across in the simplest form possible? Mayhaps.

A few years ago I began to use the pharmacy at one of the big discount stores. On the neck of each prescription bottle, the pharmacist attached a blue rubber ring (so as to separate your meds from your mate’s, which may be red or orange or green). Though I recycled the plastic bottles, I didn’t know what to do with the rubber rings. I couldn’t just  throw them away. I knew where they’d wind up. The same is true for those little plastic ties shaped like horseshoes that you find on a loaf of bread, many with a date on them, indicating when the loaf went to the shelf or when it should leave the shelf. Whatever. And what about those strips we glue to our noses at night so we can breathe? The truth is that none of these articles, as small as they are, currently recycle (at least not at our local centers). Too small to recycle? I don’t know. Millions of people must buy their pharmaceuticals from the same chain I do. Millions of people must buy bread each day, their nose strips. Just because we can’t “see” the space their (excuse me,  they’re) taking up, can’t “see” the thousands of years it will take for the earth to ingest these items doesn’t mean we should just let them go. Does it?

I continue to do close readings of all the New Yorker stories from 2011, so far more than thirty. Early impression? Our nation (and our world for NY includes a number of translations) is blessed with a large number of gifted writers of various ages, who represent nearly every ethnic and sexual (almost) group in America. Anyone trying to get a story published in the New Yorker has a great deal of talented competition.

One Saturday I watched Michael Moore the filmmaker speak for three hours on C-SPAN’s Book-TV (I recorded it). A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn was a book he mentioned as having had great influence over his thinking. I’m about half-way through The People’s History, and I’ve learned a lot, too. One, Christopher Columbus was a murderer, who, along with other Spaniards, over a period of several years, wiped out an entire tribe on the island of Hispaniola. Hard to believe?

What about this? “Through all that growth, the upper class was getting most of the benefits and monopolized political power. A historian who studied Boston tax lists in 1687 and 1771 found that in 1687 there were, out of a population of six thousand, about one thousand property owners, and that the top 5 percent—1 percent of the population—consisted of fifty rich individuals who had 25 percent of the wealth. By 1770, the top 1 percent of property owners owned 44 percent of the wealth” (49).

Or this? At the beginning of the 20th century, writer Charles Beard noted that four groups “were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, and men without property” (91). Beard concluded: “The Constitution, then, illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle–income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law—all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity” (99).

Today’s “buffers”—the unemployed middle-class, unemployed students, unemployed graduates, underemployed union members, the disenfranchised elderly, all ethnic groups—have taken to Wall Street to march against this very same greed that has haunted our country since its inception. Let’s give them a few bucks a month to help out.