Curmudgeon letter writers have lost their way
I write to complain, bitterly, about the Cowichan Citizen’s curmudgeon policy. How can it be that things have come to so low a pass?
In my day curmudgeons (old white males with “common sense” arguments, ter-bakky chaws and spittoons close to hand) would salt their opinions of the youth of the day (me and my compadres) with invective against long hair, free love, platform shoes, and dancing without touching. They would harangue the closest listener with tales of wasted youth of epic proportions, declaring the nation itself to be at peril in the hands of the mis-spent escapades of “wasted” adolescents. We were all, we were told, going to “pot”. If not to hell in a sea of anti war protestors…don’t even get them started on nuclear holocaust avoiders.
Now their descendants write the paper raising the flag against climate activist school kids. Kids calling on the world to treat the environment like they were taught to treat their homes. With care, respect and a distinct lack of indoor smoke or other forms of pollution. Kids worried about the future of the planet. Unlike the heyday of those who write the letters, these kids refuse to dump paint in storm drains, or drain oil pans in the forest, or dump old furniture in the river. Old white guy letters falling thick as acid rain, shower the paper with demands that these kids mind their own business, get back to school and stop their misguided caring about the world.
What kind of curmudgeonliness is that? Picking on kids for being responsible citizens? I think it is time the Cowichan Citizen stopped accepting letters from curmudgeons who’ve so badly lost their way. Please raise your standards and insist they put the “bear” back in “bearer of bad tidings”.
Keith Simmonds
Duncan