A Salute to Science
Letter to the editor - published 01/13/2020
From The Anniston Star of 01/13/2020. Click this link to see the letter.
This was another letter that appeared only on the Star’s website, not in the print edition. It was printed verbatim, with no edits for length or content.
The noteworthy thing about this letter, for me, is the payload I smuggled in in the guise of writing about a current news story. The genome-from-chewing-gum story was the original inspiration for writing this letter, but as often happens I wrote a few paragraphs and then was stuck for an ending. That’s when the true anecdote about my dad and his observation about the cave paintings on the PBS program bubbled up from memory. It didn’t have far to bubble up, because ever since my childhood, that has been one of my favorite jokes apparently made up on the spot by a real person other than a professional comedian. I can’t look at anything related to cave persons, especially cave paintings, without remembering it. Given what it refers to I was surprised but very happy that My Tribute to Dad made it into print.
The other noteworthy thing is that this letter marks the beginning of The Great Publishing Drought of 2020 (for me, anyway). After getting this longish letter and the previous very long one about Doctor Wallace into print, on top of the five other letters that I had seen in print since late August, I felt that I was gaining momentum toward a half-formed goal of trying to talk the local paper into giving me space for a regular column. Even if they laughed me out of the room, I figured that the conversation wouldn’t hurt, and I might get some pointers as to what would incline them to publish me (outside of the letter-to-the-editor route). I figured if I kept submitting longer works, and if they kept printing them, I would be ready to make my case.
But it was not to be. I wrote and submitted a couple more long pieces that were not printed. I was about to regroup and go back to shorter letters, when suddenly, around March or thereabouts, The Anniston Star eliminated the editorial page altogether! I was shocked. Here was a paper that had run continuously since the 1800’s just dropping the editorial ball. They wrote that they were doing that for economic reasons, and because they wanted to focus their resources on local news coverage. That part I understood. But they also wrote something along the lines that readers can find plenty of opinion and editorial content elsewhere. Well heck, Mr. Publisher, there’s all kinds of stuff in the local paper that I could find elsewhere—and not all of it is mission-critical (this paper reliably reports the exact numbers of digs and spikes in local high school volleyball matches—something I’m sure I could find by calling up the team manager during his or her homeroom period if I really desperately needed to know). I mistakenly thought that local editorial content was mission-critical, but the publisher clearly disagreed. Digs and spikes: in. Informed commentary on important issues of the day: out.
So here I was, retired and trying to build up to earning a regular spot on what I thought was the coolest section of the newspaper, and at that exact time, after 150+ years, they kill that section! Talk about feeling like unseen forces were plotting against you! Luckily, I don’t believe in unseen forces. But still, the timing was a real smack in the face.
It was around that time that I began to spend more time on trying to write fiction, so while I lamented the loss of the local Opinion page, I had other irons in the fire. And then, a few months later (I forget exactly when), the Star got a new editor and shortly after he came aboard, the Opinion page was restored. It was only one page where it used to be two, but at least it was there—and with letters from readers.
I jumped back onto the regular-submission train and it turns out the new editor also likes my stuff and so I get letters published fairly often. And I have dropped the idea of asking for a regular commentary spot in this paper, in favor of publishing on my own two blogs.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.