On July 30, 2012 I plan to register for a post-graduate
English course in memoir writing and other creative non-fiction offered online at ucla.
But here are some other non-fiction matters on my mind:
Dear Abby’s column from a few days ago, “Having a cancer-stricken son excuses e-mailed thank-yous."
Dear Abby’s column from a few days ago, “Having a cancer-stricken son excuses e-mailed thank-yous."
I continue to marvel that so many people think that
writing thank you notes is a question of expectations and etiquette. Jeanne Phillips (Dear Abby) says herself
“wWriting personal thank-you notes (is )the proper thing to do.” Only one person showed an understanding that
it goes way beyond propriety. This is
what he wrote:
Handwrite those
notes. Make them brief. Flollowing my wife’s death two years ago, I
hadnwrote about 400 thank-yous to those who had sent cards and flowers or made
donations. It was cathatic for me, and
it recognized the efforts of those who contributed.
I remember years ago reading about a young college
graduate who confided in a friend that he was terribly depressed and didn’t feel
like doing anything. She advised him to
start writing thank you notes for his graduation presents, and he thought she
was incredibly insensitive. But he did
it, and it worked!
I remember how much it helped me after the death of my
sister Missy. Yet, some people obviously
thought I was doing it out of a sense of duty and expressed their alarm. It was only later that I found out that it
was considered “correct etiquette.” I
certainly wasn’t doing it for that reason!
The Chronicle wrote a really crazy anti-Mirkarimi editorial
“It’s about the sheriff” on July 13, 2012, and here’s a really good response:
According to Marisa Lago’s Capitol Notebook (July 21,
2012) Chinese merchants and leaders in the Bay Area (Chinatown Neighborhood
Association and Asian Americans for Political Advancement) this week have a
nnounced a federal lawsuit agins the law banning the importation and selling of
shark fins. I had been so impressed when
my students—including the Chinese ones—were aware of the reason behind the ban—that
it was depleting the number of sharks in the ocean so that the food chain was
out-of-whack--and putting back the sharks, who couldn’t survive without their
fins. I’d apologized for the original
words in Grant Avenue from even the new David
Henry Hwang version of Flower Drum Song had these lyrics:
You can eat if you are in the mood.
Shark fin soup, bean cake fish.
We changed those
lyrics:
You
can eat if you are in the mood,
NOT
shark fin soup, but bean cake fish.
They understood.
Ho can the SF Chinese cry “racism” whenin China itself they’re banning shark
fin soup at official banquets.
It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to people who’ve
made a living selling sharp fin soup—or foie
gras. But Just as with tobacco, we’ve
got to acknowledge what’s harmful and teach other trades.
And on the subject of Planet Earth, Here’s the latest
from Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet
for Friday, July 13, 2012
The Arctic melt has a new record.
Bird parents and their babies can no longer communicate
because of being drowned out by the noise of modern citis, and this has lead to
“an alarming decline” in the numberof sparrows.
There’s been a historic drought in the US—the worst since 1956.
According to Don Asmussen, CNN says that Romney’s
offshore moey is hidden in the Grat Pacific garbage Patch. He also says that as cars burst into flames “FLOR
C. WARNS CUSTOMER TO ESCAPE ESCAPES/
CEO: ‘Just jump out now.”
Considering the environment, I should be glad, I guess, that electronic books now have surpassed
print ones in sales:
But I’m not!
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