Some fan mail becomes fanny mail
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
When you write a column, as I do, you must expect that you have stuck out your chin and readers are poised to take a swing.
Last week I wrote about a Washington reader telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about in reference to terrorist threats.
This week Janeann Erickson of the Erickson Ranch in Valley Ford, Calif. sent me a stern warning about a Mother’s Day column I wrote concerning birds building a nest under the eaves of my house. I had said I wanted to blast the nest out with a garden hose.
Janeann was appalled at my statement and sent me this notice:
"Please be advised that most songbirds are protected (swallows are protected by International Migratory Bird laws) and unless the birds are European starlings or English House sparrows it is illegal to harm the birds or their nests."
You people are much too serious. My column is written with tongue firmly implanted in cheek.
But be assured my ego is callused to the slings and arrows after the 60 odd years of plying the fourth estate waters. Those waters are filled with man eating sharks. I have two files in my office — one titled fan letters — the other fanny letters. The fanny letters are those like the one Janeann sent this week and Brian C. Clark of Pullman, Wash. sent the week before.
All in a day’s work, I say.
But again, thank God for fan letters. Back in 1997 when I had decided the ink had run dry on my writing after a massive heart attack, my ink well was replenished by the number of encouraging cards and letters that came from readers.
As I write this column, I am looking above my desk at a framed card I received during that period from Anthony Bayliss of Roseburg with the childlike scrawl of his name on the message: "Each of us has a place in God’s heart." His is just one of those cards and letters I received that became my motivating force.
Recently, I received a letter from Jo Ann Bender from Colville, Wash. who got the real message in my column that Clark missed in his rush to judge that I had erred. Jo Ann owns "The Lazy ‘B’ Ranch" a bed and breakfast she says is "somewhere in the North Woods around Northport, Boundary and Ledpointe, Wash." She is a writer and understood that my column "touched upon the frustrations and challenges of a writer…"
She wrote: "The heart breaking struggle to find an agent or publisher is agonizingly true, not only for the person you are mentoring, but for anyone further along in their writing career. My path along the writer’s trail has been long and varied, from journalist, to medical editor, to publicist and finally independent publisher."
It was obvious to me, having been there, what Jo Ann was saying:
"Writers don’t give up. We wobble along the trail like addicts, the happiest when writing … anything … lists, journals, stories, letters to a columnist. When we aren’t doing what our souls crave, we get cranky. It’s magic if our work finds an audience. Like other artists, we place our canvas of words upon the easel of public opinion and are rejected. Thus, your kindness to one of us is acknowledged and appreciated."
To Jo Ann and all the fan letter writers, your kindness is acknowledged and appreciated. Even the fanny letters make me aware that people are reading what this word addict is writing.
Or as the late Jeff MacNelly, cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune and creator of the daily comic strip "Shoe," wrote in a Shoe cartoon showing the old owl sitting at his cluttered desk mumbling to himself:
"A column doesn’t have to be spectacular every day. Just memorable — memorable enough to make your reader forget the garbage you wrote yesterday."
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)