We in the news business would like to ask if you might support us with a small donation. We would not normally make such a request, but these are, as you know, far from normal timse. As newspapers face rising costs and are forced to drastically downsize personnel, despite being owned by billionaires, we have decided to put the onus on you, reader, if you would like to see quality journalism continue.
We cannot promise that we will not cast a narrowed eye on coverage that we deem unfair or on political cartoons that do not agree with our views. (Oh, wait—we fired all the political cartoonists. Never mind.) And for those fretting over the fact that we (long ago) let our copy editers go and more recently all photographers, let us remind you that everyone has a camera in their phone these days. And spelling and grammar (or consistency, for that matter are overrated.
Not to worry that some of our best and brightest staffers are wondering whether their unemploymnt checks will arrive (keeping our fingers crossed), or that prize-winning professionals are befuddled about their futures as well as the state of newspapers in this great country. The old practice of journalists holding power to account is passé, after all. We have faith that you, our readers, will step up and pony up your hard-earned dollars so that we can continue to serve you as we (and our powerful friends—not naming names) see fit.
Thank you very muhc.
•••
To my readers:
While I created this fictional letter for satirical purposes, it has elements of appeals I’ve received from struggling media (including typos).
This is not to say suggest that readers should not help support media they trust and believe in (Sacramento’s new local abridged.org site, for example). But for those of us committed to fair and responsible journalism, it can be infuriating to receive appeals like this from well-heeled corporations cutting staffers (including reporters, copy editors and photographers) and resources that are needed to do good work.
And you never need to pay me for what I do here. Thank you for reading!
At 2 a.m. I awaken with a sensation I haven’t had in a week, a rumbly in my tumbly, as Pooh sang,
rather than the struggling lower digestives healing from infection churning painfully.
And I rise, think what I might eat, remember the split pea soup in the fridge I’d made before all
this began, me the limited-ability cook, which propels me slowly to the kitchen. I find the little
container waiting and lift it from its cold closet, locate a small saucepan and scoop out
a ladleful, thinning it with water, removing bits of carrot that the recovering colon might
take issue with, and turn on the flame. “Never microwave homemade soup,” one of my
now-gone cooking mentors said, joining me in the kitchen, so I don’t, though I can’t remember why.
And then I sense my parents— like me, cooking-impaired— and my new saucepan
transforms into an old white metal one rimmed in red, my father at the stove, stirring
some kind of Campbell’s, my mother smiling, and we all stand in silence as I pour
the essence of pea into a small white bowl. When I lift the spoon for the first taste, I hear
the voice of the one who cooked for me ages ago in this kitchen say, “Atta girl, Toots. Easy now,”
as the companion spirits, more arriving every second, nod their approval.
And I feel my tumbly smile, too, as the warm slips in, quelling the rumbly.
•••
“Rumbly in My Tumbly” (written by the brothers Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman) was first sung by Sterling Holloway as Pooh in the 1966 animated Disney film, “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.” You can watch the video here.
As a young musician, I thought Aaron Copland composed the tune, coming as it does a good way into his “Appalachian Spring,”
but there on the stage only a baker’s dozen of musicians and a conductor, a double string quartet, actually, playing melodies and variations
I hadn’t remembered. No brass. No percussion. And it took a long time to get to the “simple gifts” melody, deep into the piece, which I chalked up
to faulty memory. My little-footed former flutist friend next to me, surprised as I by the small number onstage, later read in the program
that we had just heard the composer’s original version of the piece, a ballet composed for Martha Graham. A year later, 1945, the suite
for full orchestra debuted, with plenty of brass and percussion. And the composer grew it again in the 1950s, adding the tympani part
I remember playing long ago. For years I thought Copland wrote “simple gifts,” only to learn in a music history class that
a mid-19th century Shaker minister from Maine wrote the hymn. Like all good artists, Copland borrowed it, no doubt inspired
by its message of simplicity and humility that he wove into his composition, so smoothly danced by, among others, Graham herself.
After the concert I came home happy to find the elegant dancer on what must have been live TV in 1959, delivering
the simplest of gifts unadorned—as the best ones are, if we allow ourselves to perceive them—as the song says,
“in the place just right, in the valley of love and delight.”
•••
With appreciation to the Sacramento Philharmonic for its wonderful Feb. 28 performance of, among other pieces, Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”
“Simple Gifts” was composed in 1848 by Elder Joseph Bracket, a member of the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine.
You can watch Martha Graham as the bride and Stuart Hodes as the husband dancing this “simple gifts”section of “Appalachian Spring” for live television in 1959 (though all parts of the ballet are also available on youtube).
1. Three weeks before your tax appointment, drag out last year’s box of bills/receipts/miscellany that’s bound to have pieces of paper needed to accompany…
2. …the stuffed-full file folder of what you imagine might be write-offable/reportable for your Super Tax Lady who is endlessly patient with math-impaired you.
3. Two weeks before your tax appointment put box and folder in a prominent place. Like in the living room where you will surely trip over the box or scatter the contents of the folder if you don’t tend to them pronto.
4. Regather the contents of folder after cat scatters them. Attempt to unsquash the squashed box lid after your late mother’s 20-pound cat decides that it makes a good nap spot.
5. Gather office supplies (your favorite part): paper clips, stapler, sharp pencil with new(ish) eraser. Steal a few sheets of white paper from the printer. Try not to get sidetracked when you realize that:
a. you need the big, rubber-coated paper clips, and while you think you’ve recently replenished your supply (didn’t you?), now you have to find them.
b. you need at least one giant clippie thingie for the fat pile (of say, bank statements or book receipts), and you just saw some of those in the boxes you brought home last year when you and your sister cleaned out your late mother’s house, and you’re pretty sure you know which box that is.
c. A half hour later, after opening and moving the boxes (again) that have resided in your back bedroom for a year, you still have not located the giant clippie thingies. (They will, predictably, turn up some time after tax season. Just watch.)
d. And don’t you still have a calculator in a desk drawer?
e. Wait. There’s a calculator on my phone? (Oh, yeah, huh?)
f. Success! A giant clippie thingie (that you probably brought home after you retired five years ago) in the top desk drawer!
6. Go through the box and sort the receipts, making neat piles on top of the marimba in the living room (a musical instrument transformed into a large, padded, horizontal table for now), and be grateful that former cats who liked to sleep up there are no longer. Likewise, there is also no dog (whom you loved but who one year barfed on the box).
7. Remember that all you have to do is add up receipts (on the phone! check the results at least twice) and change numbers in little boxes on the sample form the Super Tax Lady sends every year. She will deal with them. She will ask polite questions. Remember not to sound defensive. (You two have had a relationship longer than… well, a long time… and you really like each other.) “I don’t know,” or “I will go home and check that,” are perfectly legitimate answers.
8. Remember that your late husband was so freaked out by the process that he literally used to sweat sitting in front of the desk of a long-ago Tax Lady. You are a Grown-Up, and you have been doing this for a quarter century on your own.
9. Remember what the long-ago Tax Lady used to tell you:
a. You are not going to jail if you do your best to tell them what you’ve earned. And save your receipts!
b. The chances of an IRS audit are remotely on the order of flying yourself to the moon—or, in my case, doing my own taxes.
10. Before you leave for your tax appointment, leave the box with its sunken lid in the living room so the cat can nap on it. He had a rough year, too.
11. EGBOK, your mother used to say. Everything’s gonna be OK.
12. She was not wrong.
•••
Thanks to our Super Tax Ladies Sheila McGovern and Mary Walters of MPW CPAs in Elk Grove, California, for your always-excellent work on our behalf.
Super Tax Ladies Mary Walters (left) and Sheila McGovern (right) of MPW / Photo: Dick Schmidt
Clearly, I have taken colons for granted for far too long: both kinds.
For one, the sweet little piece of punctuation that sets up a list or example.
(Digression: How many times did I repeat that to students who were likely to never
use one? And truly, you don’t need to unless, as one of them pointed out,
“You’re trying to be fancy.”) Two vertically aligned periods that, I suppose, imitate
the verticality of human innards, though that colon is a snaky, winding thing
resembling complicated plumbing, which it is. And as mine heals from
a who-knows-how-I-got-it infection, I am more aware of my own than ever before,
which just shows to go you, as a former newspaper photo editor used to intone:
Be good to your colon, and your colon will be good to you.
•••
With thanks to Rick Shaw, a former assistant director of photography for The Sacramento Bee, who imparted that wisdom to at least one of his staff photographers, Dick Schmidt.
Rick went on to a great journalism editing career at other newspapers, as well as serving as a photojournalism faculty member and director of the Pictures of the Year International competition at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Güd wrtr 