The Tyranny of Capital Letters

We begin sentences in English with capital letters and proper names and places get capitalized as well. As our public discourse coarsens, in this Presidential election year, more and more of us think, speak and talk about what we feel are the main issues in ALL CAPS…… Of course, there's (the) WAR (I love the use of the definite pronoun as if with all the armed struggles going on in the world, there is but ONE war) and the ECONOMY and, let's see, HEALTH CARE and WORLD HUNGER and AIDS (it's been a public health crisis issue for, what, twenty-five years...)

Actually we have as many issues, all of which need fixing at our local levels as well as at the regional and national levels, as we will ever have capital letters and I don't think we have very much from shouting at one another about any of them. Even when we agree, we've elevated being disagreeable to an art form. If anyone ever makes the stare of cold contempt an Olympic event, there will be a mob at the medals podium. Maybe it's because there's a lot more of us now on earth than ever before (and yet, I know of a dozen places I can get to in ten minutes and not see another soul for hours, so how crowded is the planet?) we're all a little shorter with one another.

Sadly, how we say what we say has a great deal to do with how we hear one another, or fail to. Instead of the Crown of Creation, the Top of the Food Chain, pooling resources to create solutions for common challenges, we hurl barbs and invectives across partisan political and ideological barricades to determine 'whose fault this mess is'. And while there's no clear consensus on a winner, the loser is all of us. Not just for all the time and talent and energy and money and manpower we squandered trying to agree on an approach to working on a problem but for ALL the other CAPITAL LETTER ISSUES we never even got to.

A quick local example on how we can all further comity and communication over confrontation and cacophony, where I live in Norwich, CT. This coming Monday night, our new City Manager, Alan Bergren, presents to his bosses, the City Council, his proposed 2008-2009 budget. (Where ever you live, your municipality is probably at about the same point on the calendar). If there were ever a moment to more carefully listen to and read what is being proposed, and how it is to be paid for, in the course of the year, I don't know when it is.

Here's what will happen in Norwich: people I've never seen at City Council meetings will attend (in theory a good thing, right?) and even though there have been hints and references in the local papers about the budget, it will be after 7:30 PM (EDT) Monday before the City Manager actually shares it with the Council. That won't stop most of us in the audience from debating in ever louder tones what we think is in it and why. By the time the Council gets the budget (and they're almost as new as the City Manager; that is, of the six (plus Mayor) on the Council, only the Mayor and one alderperson are 'holdovers' in the wake of November's election), there will be a chill in the air as sides have been drawn and positions chosen. For the three days after the Council meeting the local radio call-in show will be buzzing with angry residents, none named Ezra or T. S., and then the letters to the editors of the two local papers will start, and there will be some reasonably warm public hearings on the proposed budget where numbers of every size and variety will be thrown about like projectiles.

Memory can play tricks on you in terms of what things cost three years ago or what was paid for and how as public safety expenses. That's why, and if you live in Norwich, I've done the legwork for you, and if you don't, go to your town;'s website and find your old operating budgets and download them so you can compare where we are heading to where we were. In Norwich, you'll find the last four previous budgets, here, and make it a point to read the words (explaining the allocations) as hard as you read the numbers and it'll help all of us have a more informed discussion on our next budget as we build a better city for our families and ourselves, which, I think, is one of the reasons why we form governments in the first place.

We'll continue the debate and phone-ins and the letter-writing, but hopefully with a bit more insight and understanding of both the process and the product. I'm working on getting new glasses so I can better see other's points of view but "Right now I can't read too good/Don't send me no more letters, no/Not unless you mail them/From Desolation Row."
-bill kenny