Letters to Editors, Checking Email, Miro and more on Dirty Sidewalks

Check Your Email for the Truth

When you receive an Email dealing with politics or the economy containing material you suspect is untrue, you should not just let it go.  The sender has probably sent it to many other recipients, and if the material is incorrect, you should Email the sender, pointing out his errors and suggesting that, if he or she has any integrity, they forward an Email correcting the misinformation to all of those whom they misinformed.   (Since some Emailers are ideologues who don’t even know the meaning of the word “integrity,” they probably will ignore your request, but others may send out a correction, so it is worth trying.)

To check out information you feel is incorrect, you might go to www.snopes.com.   Another alternative is www.factcheck.org.   Snopes is an independent organization, funded by advertising, although some right wing sources claim, with no basis whatsoever, that it is supported by George Soros.  Factcheck is run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.  Rightwingers sometimes criticize Factcheck because in a 1995 program, the “Chicago Annenberg Challenge,” the Annenberg Foundation, long before the establishment of Factcheck, financed a public school improvement program in Chicago which was directed by Barack Obama who was a community organizer at that time.  A distinct advantage of Factcheck over Snopes is that its material may be copied and pasted into your Email whereas Snopes’ material cannot.

Both sources are frequently criticized by those on the right, but the only reason they seem to do so is because they resent having their opinions challenged. I have found that both sites document falsehoods, regardless of their source.

JL


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Letters to the Editor

Some people, myself included, have occasionally written letters to the Editor of their local newspaper.  When we were living up north, I would write to the Editor of Newsday (Long Island, NY) and down here, I write to the Palm Beach Post.  Most of my letters go unpublished, but some have been printed.  I am most proud of my letter to the Palm Beach Post published in December of 2001, almost ten years ago, which pointed out the danger of globalization and outsourcing of jobs because of the damage it could do to our economy by creating unemployment.  Another one of my letters, published in 2007, warned against the dangers of investments in speculative vehicles, including mortgage-based securities and the danger that posed to our economy.  This is one of the reasons I have no faith in economists.  Most of them cannot see the plain truth, the handwriting on the wall or whatever you may call it, which is clearly evident to me, and probably to you as well.

But getting back to letters, until recently, when you saw something in a paper that moved you to offer your opinion, you would write a letter to the Editor.  If the newspaper chose to publish it, your thoughts reached many thousands of readers.  Nowadays, most newspapers put their content on their internet versions, where you still might see that same something which moves you to offer your opinion.  Rather than suggest that you do this by sending a letter to the Editor, by mail or on line, newspapers such as the Palm Beach Post, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Miami Herald or the New York Times offer you a simpler way to make your comment right at the bottom of the article where it will appear on their website.  This is a lot easier than writing a letter to the Editor.

The problem with this is that the comments you may make on the web site reach far fewer readers than letters published in the newspaper.  True, you are almost guaranteed that your thoughts will appear there, but you have no idea how many people will look at them.  Except for the New York Times, such comments may be looked at by even fewer people than are reading this blog.  Another consideration is that traditional letters to the Editor are looked at by the paper’s editorial staff to decide what gets published.  Someone knowledgeable reads them. Comments made on the internet, however, are handled at a far lower level, and the only reporter who might look at them would be the one who wrote the original article.

My recommendation:  If you have something to say, write a traditional letter to the Editor and send it by mail, or via their web site’s mechanism for doing so.  Keep it short, to the point, and always reference the article in the newspaper which moved you to state your opinion.

Jack Lippman

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Hitting on Miro

Back on January 12, I posted material on the abstract painter, Joan Miro, on this blog.  You can review it by inserting “Miro” in the search box on the lower right side of the blog.  I mention this because over the months that posting has been accessed far more than any other prior one which appeared on the blog.  I would suspect that its continued popularity is because our posting shows up on search engines when someone is trying to learn about Joan Miro.  Our recent record of four hits from Romania would lead me to suspect that a recent assignment regarding Miro was given in Art History 101 at the University of Bucharest, sending some of the students to Google to find out about him.

JL

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Dirty Sidewalks

Of local interest to those of you who read the recent story of my dirty sidewalk (go back to the posting preceding this one for the story and a picture), I want to bring you up to date.  Yesterday, I received the following Email from our Property Manager.

Good Afternoon,

Inspection of the common sidewalks show that it has been “defaced”. The cleaning of the sidewalks had been budgeted for 2011 and completed. The Board is looking into possibly two times per year for future; but at this time I ask you to please repair the sidewalk to not show “Clean Me”.

And here is a copy of my Email response to her:

I recall that, quite properly, you recently requested some residents to clean their driveways or to clean their mailboxes, both of which are the responsibility of the homeowner to maintain. Obviously, the Association is interested in keeping the community looking well.

I would hope that this desire goes beyond asking homeowners to live up to their responsibilities in regard to mailboxes and driveways and also applies equally to the responsibilities of the Association as well. The Association occasionally manages to find resources to do a lot of things which are not adequately budgeted for and keeping all of our sidewalks clean should be one of them.

Perhaps some of the scheduled landscaping work, gatehouse work or even clubhouse updating work can be reviewed so that this more immediate need can be met. I trust that you will pass this on to the Board, and until they properly carry out their responsibility of maintaining clean sidewalks throughout the community, I choose to leave the partially cleaned sidewalk in front of my house as a reminder to them. It this sidewalk could talk, that is what it would say!

Thank you for your Email. I know you are only doing your job.

Stay tuned for further developments. 

JL

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