Zen and the Art of /.*/

Here is the previous post, as updated and submitted to the Osseo / Maple Grove Press for publication:

In my water bill from the City of Osseo, I found an insert containing the following text, accompanied by the city’s logo:

– Thinking Home Improvement?

– Siding - Windows - Roof - Kitchen - Baths - Garage - Driveway - and more!

– 4% or 5% Loans up to $25,000

– Not sure where to start? The City of Osseo also offers FREE remodeling advisor services to Osseo residents. A remodeling advisor will come to your home and discuss your remodeling ideas with you.

– The city of Osseo is partnering with the Center for Energy and Environment to offer several options to finance your home improvement projects.

A few days later, when stopping at city hall for an unrelated errand, I saw a stack of full-color fliers on heavy cardstock advertising the same program. In addition to much of the same language, it included the announcement of “Below-market fixed rates!”

First of all, what on earth is the government doing in the home improvement business?

Second of all, while the value of my house drops drastically, the “taxable” value stays high and my taxes continues to rise. If the government has been running such a tight ship that it has taken care of all of the core functions of government and still has money left over to help everyone remodel their homes, then LOWER MY TAXES!

Most rational people have postponed or canceled plans to remodel their house because their budget is tight and instead choose to either save their money, pay down their debts, or spend their money on more important things. But the government, in its infinite wisdom, doesn’t like this and thinks instead that in difficult and uncertain economic times, families should be incurring even more debt!

And why, in an economy that has far too many construction contractors for the demand and interest rates that are way too low, does the government need to try to force the situation any further? Construction contractors are tripping over themselves to find work at any price above cost! If somebody wants to remodel their home, there are better deals now than ever! It’s not enough that people have voted with their dollars (hint: they don’t want to build any more for a while), the government sees fit to confiscate more of your money to subsidize one particular industry and one particular consumer choice.

Finally, do you want to know the dead giveaway that you’re being ripped off? “Below-market fixed rates!” The “market rate” is the rate at which a buyer and a seller will voluntarily come together and agree on an exchange because it is mutually beneficial. To arrive at something below market rate means that the transaction is being subsidized by a third party. And in case you weren’t aware, government doesn’t produce anything of value themselves–they can only confiscate from those of us that are productive.

The only remodeling anybody should be doing is installing better locks on their doors for when the government shows up at the door and says, “I’m here to help.”

The letter was submitted as it appears above and published in today’s paper, but the second- and third-to-last lines were printed as:

“To arrive at something below market rate means that the transaction is being subsidized by a third party, In case you weren’t aware, government doesn’t produce anything of value themselves–they can only confiscate from those of us that are productive.”

The publication was delayed a week because my email (whose subject line was “Letter to the Editor”) was filtered into their spam folder, so I had already gone back and forth with one of the staff who, last week, told me:

“if there are any significant issues with the letter when I edit it, I will contact you personally to try to resolve them before publication.”

I replied with:

“I would like to have it published and would be grateful to you if you contacted me to discuss any necessary changes.”

While beginning a complete sentence with “And” is certainly non-standard use and should not be used frequently, it is in fact not entirely uncommon to be seen in professional writing. It was not used accidentally–I felt it worked well there given the tone and flow of the passage.

Instead, this somewhat non-standard, though correct and intentional, passage was changed (without the promised notification) to a run-on sentence with an inexplicable capital letter! To make matters worse, it is at the crux of the argument and the second to last sentence of the article, so that the reader is left confused and frustrated right as they finish the article and associate that inexcusable grammar with my name.

The last time I wrote a letter to the editor it was similarly changed, in more than one spot, from being clear, correct, and as-intended, to nonsensical and incorrect without consultation, explanation, or reason.

But perhaps (oh there I go starting a sentence with a conjunction again…) these changes are made for the only possible logical reason: to make it fit with the rest of the writing found in the Press. This (very meager) paper is filled with grammatical errors every week–in articles written by the paid staff!

I may not be the best writer in the world, but I think it is everyone’s responsibility to have a strong control of the language if they are to be taken seriously. It is beyond frustrating, first of all, to pay to read a paper every week that pays writers and editors who consistently publish writing that would fail middle school writing courses, and secondly, to have these “professionals” “improve” my writing–that is associated with my name, published in black and white–in such a way as to take it from correct to embarrassingly incorrect.