LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Editor’s note: This letter was received prior to Thanksgiving Day, but due to our shifted production schedule, we were not able to publish it until today.
Dear Editor, On this Thanksgiving week, I wanted to step back from my usual subjects and reflect on some of the things I’m thankful for. Not the least of which is the fact that, despite what my well-intentioned English grammar teachers taught me way back in the day, I can end a sentence with the word “for,” the old prepositional rule notwithstanding.
It was touch and go there for a while, but I learned after breaking strict discipline on this rule after decades of adherence, that Zeus will not hurl lightning bolts from the heavens to explode at my feet. Botticelli’s “Venus” will not turn her back on me as she balances on her wavedriven shell. And, unlike it did to poor Tantalus, the water I reach for to quench my thirst will not recede at my approach.
Life is good. I know now I can get away with sins against my “Voyages in English” grammar textbooks almost as if I had divine dispensation. These days, as you might conclude, it doesn’t take much to make me happy.
And thankful. Just being here is enough to do it. For a long time, I took it for granted and didn’t think much about it. But then, as I counted my annual trips around the sun on this incredible vehicle called the Earth and realized they had long ago exceeded the sum of my fingers and toes, my attitude changed. And exchanging stories with old friends, and exaggerating them when I share them with new ones, I find myself thinking, “Sheesh! How’d we ever make it though that?”
Luck may have had something to do with it. Maybe a little providence. But it sure wasn’t common sense. Although there was that one time I remembered how to tie a double half-hitch when I had to help my buddy Lee tow his ’62 Beetle out of a half-frozen lake in North Jersey. I was very thankful to the Boy Scouts for teaching me that knot. And I was equally thankful that no one asked how Lee’s car got into the lake to begin with. The last person I wanted to explain that one to was the police. Or, even worse, our parents. Strangely enough, they acted like they never noticed. Or maybe I just never noticed that they noticed. Either way, it was something to be thankful for.
But here we are. Perhaps not the guys we expected to be when we grew up. But still here. Fewer Friday night excursions. Fewer hairs on our heads. Fewer cars in the water.
And that’s okay. Each day just gets more amazing. I expected it would be just the opposite. It starts with something simple — like the fact that Lee and I can still recall, with vivid detail, things that we have no business remembering. Like the very modest tips we got from the woman on the sixth floor of an old brick building, the one with the perpetually broken elevator, when we delivered her weekly grocery order from Steve’s Shop Rite. We dutifully thanked her and then grumbled to each other as we hurried back downstairs to our truck.
When we got a little older, we learned from our grandparents that their monthly Social Security checks didn’t go nearly as far as we thought they did — or should. Only then did we remember the woman on the sixth floor and appreciate the fact that she thought enough of our efforts that she always pressed a few coins into our hands after we set the groceries down and stepped back into the hallway. All those years later, our “Thank You, Ma’am”s changed from dutiful to heartfelt — even if she never knew it. Strange how time, perspective, and experience can propel you through the years and change a past you thought was unchangeable.
Then there are the things that aren’t memories yet. Or maybe they are and we don’t know it. As one of William Faulkner’s characters once observed, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
I think about that often. Maybe not in those exact words; rather, something more along the lines of what James Madison wrote in 1789 when he was drafting the Constitution’s Bill of Rights: words that were written in a very different time, but that still live and ring through the ages with a sound and a fury exceeding anything Faulkner could have imagined.
Madison wrote, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
No qualifiers. No quibbling. No equivocation. Not a “should” or a “may” among these blunt and pointed commands to Congress. It was a hard and fast “shall.” There were no two ways about it. This was — and is — the law of the land. This is why I can write why I’m writing today. And why you can read it, agree, disagree, respond to it, and agree or disagree.
So, yes, on this Thanksgiving week, I offer my wholehearted gratitude to those who created the document — simple words on paper — but words with a power that will not be denied, establishing the freedom of speech and the press that we enjoy as a nation, freedoms that are the bedrock supporting so many other rights guaranteed us by the product of those who labored at the Constitutional Convention during the hot summer of 1789. It was an imperfect document, to be sure, one that did not extend those freedoms to all, but one that contains a mechanism for change to correct those inequalities, a mechanism that expanded the definition of “We the People” far beyond the narrow limits imposed by the framers. For that, I offer my thanks.
Equally deserving of my respect, recognition, and regard are the practitioners of these rights that we so often take for granted, because a free press — an embodiment of free speech — is more than a noble idea. It is the realization of that idea, dependent on those whose daily toil is in service to exercising these rights. These are the reporters, the photographers, the editors, the administrators, the advertisers and the readers of the more than 900 newspapers in the United States. Newspapers like the San Marcos Daily Record, that add a new chapter to the story of our communities with every edition; reporting on activities that might otherwise go unnoticed except by the people, institutions, or associations directly involved with them. Democracy cannot thrive without an involved and informed citizenry.
We are fortunate in this time of media consolidation, the economic constraints of the news business, and, more insidious, an expanding media caution, that the Daily Record continues to shine a light on the people, the activities, the issues, and the organizations that make our community unique.
Think, just for a moment, what the City of San Marcos would be without the Daily Record. Think of what we would lose and likely never recover. Then compare that to the social, economic, and public policy benefits the Daily Record nourishes with every copy of every issue.
That’s why this week, more than any other week, as I give thanks for so many blessings, it is important that I recognize and thank the people of the San Marcos Daily Record for their faith and commitment to our city and to the Constitutional demand that made their profession possible. A nod to James Madison would be appropriate, as well. I’m hoping your readers join me in those thanks.
And one final word: if you ever need help hauling a car out of a frozen lake, you know who to call.
Sincerely, Jon Leonard San Marcos
