28 July 2009

United States Senate
Washington, D.C.

Dear white guys in wingtips,

If you had to appear in court and were given the opportunity to select your judge, I wonder how many of you would prefer the white guy in wingtips to the wise Latina judge with the richness of her experience.

Respectfully,
K-B

29 July 2009

English Department
Palomar College

Dear instructors who responded to my query about online writing classes with implications that I might fail to do my work, turn it in late or allow someone else to do it for me,

You are presumptuous, rude and, well, kind of sucky, and I am too old for this stuff. I surely hope this is not how you normally communicate with your students, a population I’ll not be joining.

By the way, your website content needs a little editing.

Collegially,
K-B

30 July 2009

Dear Tony, Sandra, Charlie, Martha and Percy; Dear Milt, Dionne, Warren, John, Patricia, Zo and Thelma; Dear Bonnie, George, Terry, Cliff and Mohammed; and Dear sweet girl who played with me at Lutherville Elementary when I was new and shy, and whose cornrows I craved when my thin, blond hair stuck to my pasty forehead,

I am writing to apologize for the many white folks who still don’t get it.

In our cushy little lives, insulated by the lily color of our skin, we just don’t get that prejudice prevails.

Oh, sure, the majority of us proudly extolled our enlightenment when we elected our first African American president — even some of us who didn’t vote for him — because it validated our belief in our moral superiority, our proud capacity for acknowledging a person’s abilities and potential regardless of race. And it was indeed a stellar moment for our nation.

But when it comes right down to it, when it comes down to the black-man-fumbling-at-the-front-door test — or the black-man-fuming-at-the-cop test — the election results mean squat. And for that I apologize.

White folks just don’t get that our historic willingness to wholeheartedly embrace the enslavement of a human race as an economic necessity prevails today, albeit in other forms, as so many of us wholeheartedly embrace the assumption that an angry black man is bad and scary — and even that a happy black man on a dark street is bad and really scary.

So, when President Barack Obama said the police behaved stupidly, some folks, but not enough, heard the sentiment of a person who has had experiences that lead him to empathize with a black man unfairly arrested.

And when Fox News’ Glenn Beck reacted, saying the president is a racist, some folks, but not enough, heard the sentiment of a person who has not had experiences that lead him to empathize with a black man unfairly arrested.

As for me, I heard a person who has behaved stupidly.

Love,
K-B

31 July 2009

First Energy Corporation

Dear Ms. or Sir,

Thank you for the refund check for $67.98 from my mother’s JCP&L account. It’s a nice little amount that might lend Mother lots of good fun, except for one glitch: The check is made out to my father.

This poses a problem because Father keeled over by the fishpond so many years ago, we can now joke about it, although we still sorely miss him, of course.

Unfortunately, Bank of America has no sense of humor. (The existence of BofA’s heart is also in doubt.) Consequently, I cannot deposit the refund check. So, we’d be most appreciative if you were to cancel the enclosed check and reissue the refund in Mother’s name.

If this is not within the realm of possibilities, a check made out to Mrs. Tillman Gressitt might unpucker Bank of America’s sphincter.

What do you say?

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,
K-B

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Summertime once meant slow, sultry days; the lazy drone of locusts, lulling us into a doze beneath weeping willows; finding faces in the clouds or taking lady bugs for walks from fingertip to fingertip; lolling and waiting … waiting for someone to spur the sweltering group to action.

And then the herd of kids would up and move — to the road’s edge to pop tar bubbles, coating toes and infuriating mothers at bath time. To the garden to make rose petal lipstick, blackberry war paint, and perform vignettes of classic tales. Under the fence to steal neglected rhubarb from the wild patch next door and run from the crotchety old lady who rightly treasured every wilting stalk and weed. To the rubbish heap to see who could pee the farthest, disregarding gender. Down by the train tracks to flatten pennies and marvel at the loss of Lincoln’s features. Over to the abandoned chicken coop to practice burping on demand and talk of things unspoken by parents.

Whatever we did, we did it together; it never occurred to us there was another way. Our parents had varied incomes and faiths, disparate origins and pursuits, but their distinctions were lost on us, the children of our block. We had a community of kindred souls, a cohesive force that wound us inextricably together in those days of one-car families and parents unconcerned about tossing their kids out into the world. We’d fend for each other and show up at one home or another only when hunger forced us. In those days, everyone could come out to play, and summer’s freedom was our endless stage, our indivisible barefoot pursuit, despite our differences. In those days, we could imagine no boundaries.

But today, as summer swiftly approaches, boundaries run rampant — and deadly in word and deed.

Anti-legal abortion fervor erupts in murder, as Scott P. Roeder crosses the threshold of Reformation Lutheran Church — crossing from advocating for life to destroying it — and shoots dead a physician who crossed picket lines to treat patients with disastrous pregnancies. And the cooks who help whip up that fervor, Randall Terry, Operation Rescue founder, and Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly among them, chalk up Dr. Tiller’s murder to his comeuppance for being a “baby killer.”

G. Gordon Liddy, of Watergate fame, whose radio show is not extolled for its level headedness, takes a header from the fringes into the absurdly vulgar, fretting about what might happen when President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor is menstruating. And it is not an ill-conceived joke.

James W. von Braun enters the U.S. Holocaust Museum — an institution dedicated to confronting hatred, preventing genocide, promoting human dignity and strengthening democracy — and draws a bloody line between free speech and murderous demonstration, leaving hateful destruction on both sides of his path, the indignity of a victim sprawled in death. And pundits argue whether blame falls to the left or the right.

The National Organization for Marriage, sponsor of the Gathering Storm ad, steps yet again from advocating against same-sex marriage to divisive propaganda: “Same-sex marriage isn’t just about two people living as they please, but about whether a large majority of Americans are going to be marginalized as bigots by a group of elites determined to force their new vision of marriage on the entire nation.” And the fearful fail to ask what actual harm same-sex marriage will to do their heterosexual marriages, their children, their nation.

Today, it is not the hopping anticipation of barefoot pleasures that makes the days seem so long, but the disingenuous and deadly discourse of social debate gone awry, the replacement of news with uncivil commentary, the marketing of anger and derision as information.

But it seems a futile complaint, when audiences blindly accept the “either or,” the “us or them” as absolute; when people continue to watch and listen and absorb the fear and hate. How many reactionary murderers until they question; how many vulgar and dishonest statements until they refuse to listen?

Just what would it take for them to instead seek the satisfying smell of tar, the joyful tang of rhubarb, the forthright competition of unashamed peeing, the camaraderie of unbiased children, now bigger, but still in full knowledge of how to play well with others — despite their differences?

Love,
K-B

© 2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt