O O Ø O O O O
Schneidmiller
Last Thursday, May 17, the Calgary Herald ran the following letter in response to a May 2 article entitled Summer gas price hit comes early.
Hopefully, I still have enough freedom to drive my pickup truck to work. I also like to use it to haul dirty burning firewood when they drive the price of clean natural gas through the roof. I am not driving a go-cart when I need to get somewhere. I guess I’m going to hell.
—Glenn Schnedimiller, Calgary
These four sentences have all the ingredients of a beautiful rant, without any of the typical verbal baggage. It is a veritable sampler of tricks we’ve employed over the years in our archives. A skeptical start, an accusatory tone, the whiff of conspiracy, a political stance, a derogatory stab, and a snippy conclusion.
I have now spent several hours studying this letter, and I have concluded that there is no word that can be removed, exchanged or clarified without changing its tone and intent. It is clean, pithy, sublime. It deserves to be remembered beyond the letters page of a little-loved daily.
To this end, I have reformatted it as verse:
Hopefully —
I still have
enough freedom to drive
my pickup truck
to workI also
like to use it to haul
dirty burning firewood
when they drive the price
of clean natural gas
through the roofI am not
driving a go-cart
when I need to get somewhere
I guess
I’m going to hell
I recommend using it as a prayer, a grace, a preamble, and an anthem.
Evan Spence
May 22, 2007
OOØOOOODCCCXXII
May 31st, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Dear Evan,
I am quickly coming to the realization that you will be forever remembered as the philosophical sage of your generation. This, or course, will only occur after you have departed this marble due to acute hypertension. Thus you will not survive to bask in the glory of your fame.
One request; could you please change the font within this comment box? It is so irritating that I hesitate to even leave a comment. Surely computer wizardry has advanced that far.
Jen
June 24th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Hm. Courier. Strange. I hadn’t noticed, which is even more strange.
I’ll have the intern look at it.