Phone calls and letters

Sometimes you just have to say something.

It might take a letter, it might take a phone call, but sometimes you just can't sit back and let the status stay quo.

Take last week for instance. It was the phone book that got my activist cells going and I've never been able to run from the feeling that if something is not right in the world then steps need to be taken to change things so why not just start stepping.

The lady on the phone was very nice but very concerned when I told her I had been offended. She said they'd thought they were doing things right and they'd been doing it that way for 40 years and thank you for mentioning it and they'd talk it over.

What had rubbed me the wrong way was the listings in the phone book. Last name, comma, man's name and then -- in parentheses -- woman's name, then address and dash, dash, dash, phone number. Maybe other South Davis residents found that acceptable but I don't know why. I'm not a raging feminist, nor am I all that young and independent. But I'm not a parenthesis to someone else either.

More distressing than that they would ever consider doing this and that they would actually do it for 40 years, is that no one in South Davis County has apparently brought it up before. Since the 60s.

You can never pretend you have much clout in situations like this. But sometimes it only takes a suggestion.

Other times a suggestion isn't enough.

It wasn't a phone call, but what is famously known in my family as a strongly worded letter, that I sent five-plus years ago in my first correspondence with a President of the United States.

I've not often been brassy enough to try to bend the ear of someone whose ear is bent so often it probably doesn't hear anymore. But this was a case that needed addressing even if it just rated a check mark in the "opposed" column on a spread sheet placed on his desk at the end of a week. I had to try.

It included lines like, "America has been a country that has supported peace and stability throughout the world. How can we threaten war against a country that has not threatened anyone and apparently has no connection with the World Trade Center attack?" and "American has always been a good citizen. How can we defy the concerns of people around the world and the will of the United Nations?" and "You have lost the good will of other nations and of your own citizens...Please don't attack Iraq." It was dated March 11, 2003.

He didn't listen to me. And I don't know if the people at the phone book publishers will either.

I don't always have success. But I always have to try.