Dear Maureen

Yesterday I got a friendly reply from a columnist (sorry, no name, it's too important). Either the times they are achangin' or I'm getting better. Probably the first, thank gods. Of course I want to get better too, but only a hopeless egotist can put his/her personal glory ahead of the times in THESE times.

This morning I wrote two letters. The first one in response to Maureen Dowd's Because They Could in the NY Times:

Dear Ms. Dowd,

I admire your brain, agree with almost everything you write, and after the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency attached your column about it to my refrigerator door with a magnet.

But please. "Sleeping on the couch" is a metaphor.

And then, after reading An Important U.S. Asset in Pacifying Iraq: Battle Veterans Barely Out of Their Teens I wrote this--which was carefully crafted to really be printable:

You report that Sgt. First Class Reginald Butler said, after a battle in Sadr City in which four of his soldiers were killed and 34 wounded, "Men came in to me crying. They said, ‘Sergeant, I ain’t going back out there.’ I told them, ‘I know it’s hard; I know you seen your friends die, but we got to go back out and keep fighting.’ "

Twenty years and thirty years ago the hands of these boys were much smaller, and they were learning to hold a pencil, not a gun. I was one of the people guiding their hands.

In the name of God, can’t anybody stop this?

XX, kindergarten teacher
XXXth Street Elementary School
XXX X. XXXth Street
Los Angeles, CA 900XX
323-XXX-XXXX

I know, it sounds sappy--but hey, it's a country that loves sappy.