Impulse to Neighborliness

The local newspaper, which comes out on the first of the month, carried a little article in its May issue about the slowly developing Community Council. I attend the meetings of this group, and it’s not clear to me that the Council will ever come into existence, but if it did, and if it provided some community voice for issues that are not really the province of either individuals or any one group, it would be a good thing, I think. Even discounting the border problems (and how could one do that?), there are a number of issues that really need to be dealt with, including such things as road plowing when there is snow in the winter. It’s just not practical for everyone to go out and shovel or plow the street in front of their house, which would be the preferred solution, I guess, for the ‘every man/woman for him/herself’ cadre here on the Point.

I expected that, if the Council got so far as actually attempting to do something, the letter-writing libertarian folks would be getting their pens out. But, to my surprise, this little article about organizing the group produced one of these letters. It was sent to the newspaper, of course, but it was also circulated widely on one of the Point’s all-purpose email lists. Let us just say that it was a somewhat intemperate missive (at first, I wrote 'missile,' which might be the more accurate noun) threatening the Council, should it ever do anything to irritate Mr. H, with litigation. Mr. H reminded readers that he was from the South and that they weren’t yet finished with the Civil War down there and he wouldn’t stand for anything that might lead to increased property taxes for him. Further, that to aggravate him meant a much greater response than the aggravating force might want. So, beware! I feel pretty sorry for him at the thought of his response over the coming decades to those inevitably increasing property taxes, but he’ll just have to work it out. My condolences to those with whom he works it out.

It’s hard to imagine just what inspires such fulmination; at least hard for me to imagine it. It’s a kind of bullying letter, but it is, after all, from a man who is one of a thousand full-time residents here. He must have lots of ordinary interactions with people here in the market, the post office, etc. I think I saw him at the nursery the other day. My guess is that he’s not interested in John Donne’s ‘No man is an island’ thesis. But what is he interested in? A life that is ‘nasty, brutish, and short’? The kind of life that Myanmar is showing us? I just don’t get why somebody wants to go so far out of his way to irritate and offend his neighbors, even if, as he says, he ‘likes anarchy.’ Has it never occurred to him that most people aren’t that crazy about anarchy and therefore likely to make his life difficult in their own way?

What may be harder to imagine is why one would reply to such a person. I can’t explain that, either, but after a lot of dithering, I did. I suggested that if he was going to have a career as one of a slowly increasing group of intemperate letter writers here in Point Roberts (I think he would be the third one), he might learn to incorporate a little more humor in his work. In his prompt reply, he pointed out that I was a moron and that if I should be so rash as to reply to him again, he would delete my e-mail unread. Ahh, the horror of it all. Deleted, unread. Which may say more about him than I had expected by way of a reply.

The world is doubtless filled with people who long to be heard, to be read, but who feel they are being deleted, unread. Here in Point Roberts, virtually anyone can be heard, if not in the newspaper, at least on the email lists. On the Internet, of course, as the classic New Yorker cartoon pointed out, ‘Nobody knows you’re a dog.’ In a small town, however, not so much. And deleting is a keystroke available to us all.