Another Day...

...another ton of letters from organizations beseeching dollars.  But it seems larger than 'normal'.  Maybe I am just experiencing a seasonal aspect of the phenomenon: people on summer holiday, so the level of donations goes down, and the organizations have to beat the bushes harder, to get through their business summer.  Understandable, perhaps  But I resent the tone of some - a lot - of these letters; making it sound as if I personally am their lifeline, that if I personally don't respond satisfactorily to their needs - and with more to make up for others who don't - they will have to close their doors forever.

There may be some sort of built-in pecking order to these sorts of things.  I have noticed, this summer, that the first real beseeching letter in this vein that I got - beyond the normal donation-requesting letters - announced the need for precisely $16,741l.57 by July 1st or they would have to close their doors forever; then the next one (it appeared to have been written by the same person; and I bet that it's true that there is some guy somewhere who makes a living by coming up with these donation-request letters)1 was for $31,016.61 by July 3rd or they would have to etc. etc.; and today's mail - actually, yesterday''s; there is so much of this stuff in the mail these days that I usually don't get around to opening the pile until the next day - threw up (and only just barely so to speak) the need for $40,600 or I, personally, was going to be responsible for their outfit's going belly-up.2

I could always send a lot of these donation-request letters back unopened, with 'Return to Sender'  written on them.  And I have recently taken to doing just that; as I seem to have been picked up on some stray mailing-list exchanges.3  However, one such 'stray' in the mail (opening) today caught my eye, and I decided rather to open it.  It was from the man who is the head of "the premier black conservative action organization in America;" and though I didn't like the style of his donation-requesting letter, I liked his personal 'style', and found myself saying, regularly, 'Right on' to the way he has taken on the various battles that come his way.  

One of them has to do with the way that leftist blacks - like leftists in general - try to smear their political opponents by calling them 'racists'; playing the race card every chance they get, and thus making "ANY criticism of liberal black politicians about racism"; thereby making black liberals immune from criticism "just because they are black".   

The way I would deal with such people, and their various agendas (Reparations for Slavery, and racial quotas, and so forth) would be to say "Oh dear.  I just never realized that there were some people who are immune from criticism.  Oh - mea culpa.  Let me just bow and scrape and beg humble pardon for a few minutes.  Excuse me while I pull my forelock a few times, and grovel grovel grovel…there.  Does that make you feel better?  Now can we get on with the substantive issues at hand??"       

(Keep up the good work, Jay.  But get yourself another Pub Rel outfit, or whoever does your donation-request letters.  I found it offensive; and therefore counterproductive.)

So I sit here with a growing pile of letters from various worthy causes, each pleading for money; and then, when you give them some, they immediately come back for more…

I am reminded of two things.  One is a film I saw years ago, about some young people in a poverty-stricken country in the East .  I forget the storyline; but one incident has stuck in my mind.  The young fellow is out alone at the time, and is being beseeched by young kids for change.  He stops, and starts handing out money…and is swarmed on; and the next thing we find is that he has been suffocated under a pile of humanity, all trying to get a piece of the action.

There is something ignoble, and just plain wrong, about all this beseeching going on, from worthy causes, these days.  We need to step back, and take a look at the larger picture.

Which brings me to the second thing I am reminded of.  Many years ago, when reading a copy of Prevention magazine, Rodale pere or fils, I forget which, wrote a preface to the issue, stating their philosophy in the form of a parable.  It went something like this:

A man is walking beside a river one day when he hears a cry for help coming from it.  He looks over and sees a child, floundering, being carried rapidly downstream.  He quickly takes off his shoes and dives in and swims out to the child, and pulls it to the shore, getting his breath back.  Whereupon he hears another cry for help emanating from the river.  Seeing another child being carried downstream and calling for help, he dives in again, and swims out and gets hold of the second child, and, though tiring, manages to drag this child to the shore as well.  Whereupon he hears another call for help coming from the river…Just then another adult walks by; and the man says to the person: "You dive in and save that child.  But I'm going upstream and getting the s.o.b. who's throwing them in." 

I'm done struggling to do what I can, on my limited, retiree's budget.

You do what you can, if that's your calling.

But me?

I'm going upstream.  

               

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footnotes:

1 I actually checked out a couple of such letters, from different sources, that looked to be very similar, with handwritten comments (in blue ink) adding to the typewritten format; and I thought I had caught them out for being phony front organizations, who only said that they were in the business of presenting petitions to Congress on, or otherwise lobbying for, their various causes.  But it turned out that they didn't hide the fact that they were part of an umbrella organization that has a very legitimate-looking 501C number for a non-profit organization.  

     However, there is another, similar letter from an outfit with a different PO Box number in Washington, D.C…….and, they may all be from the same Public Relations company business.  If so, they need to go back to school, and learn a better way of couching their letters.  

     One such letter was so flagrantly insulting to my intelligence - repeating the same words and phrases over and over and bloody over again - that I scrawled my angry responses all over it ('yes yes…got it…') and sent it back to them in their special hotshot specially expedited envelope, sans donation.  Although I did put my own stamp on it.  Their letter had made such a hissy fit about how they had already paid for the envelope and all I had to do was put it in the mail, etc. etc., that I hoped they would see the irony of my being willing to pay for the return, just to have my say, on my dime, not theirs; that sometimes, folks, less is more.

2 You think I'm kidding?  How would you take comments like: 

     "Your failure to reply to this letter will kill us!" and "But I am at the end of my rope.  And only you can save me." 

     Thank you; no thank you.  Not interested in taking on that responsibility.  Find yourself another patsy.

     Going to the wall?  Shit happens.  But you're not going to drag me down with you.  Let go. 

     I am 'inspired' to think: Who writes this stuff???

3 A key one has been on conservative Christian-oriented such mailing lists.  I never realized just how many such organizations there were 'out there,' until I have stumbled into this particular hornets' nest.   I can't recall which such organization I gave a contribution to that opened this particular door - whichever it was, I obviously liked their pitch.  (The secularists and atheists are having it all their way a little too damn much these days, in trying to throw the baby of spirituality - of a larger picture of life than merely the materialistic one - out with the bathwater of religion.)  But I am not a Christian; and in point of fact, see the need for the institution to dissolve away, and leave just the essence.  So that's not a cause that I am particularly 'up' for.  

     I am for 'the third force' involved in this sort of thing: that which moves processes forward, to a new, higher level of being than the pieces - action and reaction; thesis and antithesis - of the processes exist on.

     The Old needs to give way.  In many areas.  For the New to come into being.  Now.

     But one thing that doesn't change is having values.

     Principles.

     A sense of integrity. 

     The details may change.  The consciousness remains.