_______________TURTLE TIME BY ANNE LAMOTT (10/15/98)
	In Anne Lamott's recent column she made the following proposal: "Rather than make perfectly good writers crank out new books every few years because they need income and are otherwise unemployable, what if we gave them subsidies NOT to write any more books, like they give to tobacco growers?" I would be even more specific. Let's pay nature writers not to write anymore books for at least 10 years. (If Ed Abbey reappears, he gets an exemption.) This may be heresy, but how many times do we need to wade through some introvert's musings on his or her latest tramp into unspoiled wilderness? Would it hurt anyone to have a moratorium on the word "sacred," or on the following: "I take a step slowly across the knoll. I listen to coyotes howl. I watch hawks circle on thermals that I feel against my skin, which is attached to my body. If only all of humankind could walk with me and think the same thoughts I have; then all conflicts, cruelty and madness would cease. I take another step ... into the wild." (Because I have actually written similar passages it is only fair that I also abide by the moratorium. Is that applause I hear?) Recently I gave up trying to read a famous nature writer's latest work after encountering the pronoun "I" 18 times on the first page. (Fortunately, this was a library book.) The writer appeared lonely, self-centered and smug all at the same time. He needed friends, a volunteer shift at a soup kitchen or perhaps a year of hard labor in a Montana aluminum smelter. His precious thoughts seemed so whispered, like dim candlelight. Each word dripped from the wick of self-importance. After three paragraphs I no longer cared what he thought about bobcats, fog or cedar trees. I just wanted my own thoughts back. My wife puts it best: "Why do I want to think out of another person's brain when I can only think out of my own brain." I think I get the message by now, and I truly believe in that message. We should love nature, preserve wild places, notice hawks (maybe even magpies and coots), work to curb development, control consumption and, if possible, grow a beard to convey our woodsman prowess. To be an environmentalist is a given. Now tell me something I don't know. Truth is, most of us in the West live in crowded town-cities, where we are under-employed and overworked, and it's rare anymore if we do something as self-indulgent as loading up the 15-year-old, oil-dripping rig to drive four hours over crummy washboard roads so we can be alone to write about the experience of being alone. More immediate concerns are that our knees sound like castanets when we climb stairs; our children are moving away to cool cities and we aren't; we need dental work; we worry about black ice, health care and property assessments, retirement and our parents. The survival of the lynx or great gray owl is not a national concern despite all the books with the gorgeous covers printed on acid-free, 80-pound paper cut from national forests that now compete for space in every bookstore in America . We already have enough nature books to keep us spiritual into the next century. (Actually, we could have stopped after "Walden's Pond" and "Leaves of Grass.") What we need are some fresh voices. Let us expand the literary canon to include loggers, miners, ranchers, Greyhound bus drivers, bored teenagers living in Eugene, small newspaper publishers, Hispanics, Native Americans and barley farmers. We want books by people who use the land for work instead of reflection, people who cut down trees and plow under sagebrush. New anthologies will appear with titles like "Women of the West Who Don't Wear Dangling Silver Earrings." Or "The Best New Clearcut Stories of 1998, edited by Helen Chenoweth." The next 10 years will pass quickly and all you nature writers will receive your checks on time at the beginning of each month. In the interim, get out a little bit. Visit a city, take in a baseball game, ride a crowded subway, learn to laugh out loud and, most importantly, try experimenting with the third person plural pronoun. We'll be in touch. -- Stephen J. Lyons Pullman, Wash
_______________SEÑOR GRINGO BY MAXINE SCHUR (10/16/98)
	I just finished reading "Señor Gringo" and was transported right into the scene. I was fascinated by how much I saw each character as if I were at the table sipping beer and slowly getting woozy. The sheriff whipping out that pistol was most disturbing. I have stared down the barrel of a pistol only once, and the memory of that encounter was re-created, in effect, as Schur's words moved across my mind. At the same time, I sensed the pathos of a man made rich but deprived of what he most would liked to have had, that freedom to go back to those places which must have haunted him constantly. What an experience those little black marks on the screen allowed me to have. I offer my appreciation to Salon for this wonderful experience. I have gained very much from your Web page and am very grateful for it. -- Harold Fleming Harlingen, Texas
_______________THE GEOLOGY OF INVESTING BY DAVE ZGODZINSKI (10/16/98)
	Dave Zgodzinski's article was inaccurate in at least one respect. It would not have been possible for the client he wrote of to buy put options on the morning of Monday Oct. 19, 1987. The market had gone down 100 points the Friday before and over the weekend I came up with what would prove to be a not very unique thought: It was time to sell. I figured if I bought some puts I could make a lot of money. Monday morning I called my broker's office and reached his secretary, as usual. I asked her how the market was doing and she said it had gone down more than 200 points. I heard it, but it didn't register. I must of thought she misspoke or something. I then asked her what the prices were for the put options I had been thinking about. She said she would check on the computer. She then said there were none available. That seemed very strange. Then I asked for some other put options, my second choices. She checked and said there was not one single one available. Then she raised her voice and talked to me like I was a crazy person and said, "Brian, do you know what's happening?" I said no. She then repeated that the market had lost over 200 points, and I realized, no one was going to write an option for any price and I looked like a fool for asking. The points Zgodzinski makes are very sensible, but the article is marred by the inaccuracy. -- Brian Muldoon
_______________HOCUS BOGUS BY LAURA MILLER (10/16/98)
	Loved your review of "Practical Magic." As soon as I saw the ads, I knew what was coming: a flick calculated with Satanic precision to flatter the post-feminist self-absorption of white, middle-class college girls. Thanks to the trickle-down from the womb-worshipping fringe of the women's movement, every little empty-headed freshman can now flatter herself that, just because she's fickle, flighty or moody, she's an avatar of the Eternal Cosmic Virgin/Whore. Nice to see someone else noticed! -- Sean Hartigan Edmonton, Alberta SALON | Oct. 21, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| THE DESIGNATED MARTYR BY CHARLES TAYLOR

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