The latest issue of Citric Acid: An Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly was just released. This one includes an essay from me about writing letters. I’m in great company with the mayor of Irvine and the president of Women For: Orange County.
Read the entire issue here:
Here’s what I wrote.
Although I’ve been a woman in Orange County for most of my life, I belonged to Women For: Orange County for only a few years. I regret not joining earlier, especially since the organization has recently disbanded.
What attracted me initially was the chance to participate in the Great American Write-In. The Write-In is an annual free event where organizations offer information to the community about issues like education, health care, human and civil rights, and the environment. Since 1986, Women For: OC has provided postcards, paper, stamps, and address labels, and given me a chance to express my opinion to government and corporate decision-makers.
It was also a chance for me to do one of my favorite things: write letters. (Full anachronistic disclosure: I also subscribe to a print newspaper and listen to music on vinyl.)
I am a life-long letter writer. Raised in the South, I was required to write thank you notes to my grandmothers as soon as I learned cursive. I had an English pen pal when I was twelve. We wrote to each other on postal aerograms about the Beatles. Her favorite was Paul, mine was John.
I still send thank you notes, and sympathy, birthday, and Christmas cards. I had a long career with the postal service sorting other people’s Christmas cards. There used to be so much mail at Christmas that I worked ten hours a day, six days a week, during the entire month of December. That volume has long disappeared and since postage and printing costs have escalated, this year I’m trimming our Christmas card list.
I wonder if anyone will notice.
Meanwhile, the conservative members of the Huntington Beach City Council never seemed to notice the emails I sent about their plans to privatize our library and set up a twenty-one-member citizen committee to decide which books to buy. (They don’t trust librarians.)
I also wonder if anyone noticed the letters I wrote as a volunteer with Vote Forward during the presidential campaign. Vote Forward is a nonprofit organization of grassroots volunteers who send handwritten letters encouraging Americans in strategic states and districts to vote. This year, it was a great excuse for me to buy John Lewis stamps and write to folks in my home state of North Carolina.
Vote Forward is still evaluating the results of its 2024 campaign. They’re not sure at the moment if their letter writing efforts were worthwhile but expect to offer an analysis next summer. I hope we had an impact, even though the results were disappointing.
I will miss writing letters with Women For: Orange County, and I will also miss their annual Suffrage Day Luncheon honoring outstanding Orange County women for their unique contributions. One of this year’s honorees was Huntington Beach City Council Member Natalie Moser.
For the past two years, Moser and the two other progressive council members were consistently criticized, ignored, and outvoted in their efforts to protect our library and serve the community instead of picking endless fights with the state of California over housing mandates, voter identification, and book bans.
Although they weren’t reelected, I admire all three for running again. Alas, Surf City now has a seven-member MAGA city council, MAGA city attorney, MAGA city clerk, MAGA city treasurer, and brand new “Make Huntington Beach Great Again” red hats.
Just now I’m writing to Santa and asking for the energy and stamina to keep up some sort of good fight. And for more stamps too. Before the price goes up again.