letter to the editor

Read the editorial page of your local newspaper. Find something to agree or disagree with, and spend your lunch hour writing a letter to the editor about your informed and passionate opinion. Again, this is not really a writing exercise, per se, but an opportunity to exercise your civic rights and participate in public discourse.



I request that your news organization immediately begin a PSA campaign concerning a matter of utmost importance. Your recent "Stop Buying Massive Trucks" editorial missed a key component in the battle for our city streets–people need to turn off their brights. You need to tell everybody to turn off their brights, especially those luxury trucks. Why not hire Big Ass Truck to compose a jingle? If they sang "Everybody please switch off your brights!" I'm sure people would get the message. And for BAT's next reunion show, they can change their band name to something more reasonable.


While there are countless reasons to support this cause, I will only share the top three, as I'm sure you have important barbecue reviews to write.
Light pollution harms the local fauna. Surely you've noticed the lightning bug population shrinking. I think it's bad for bats too. Anything nocturnal probably hates it when people drive with their brights on.
Nobody needs to use brights unless they're illegally driving with a busted headlight and/or MLGW failed to address another streetlight outage. If you made it to the depths of the suburbs, maybe you can turn them on. But in town? No.
It hurts my eyes and I hate going out at night now. My parents won't drive after dark anymore either, so I have to do it for them. I can't see with all these brights in my eyes, y'all. I'm driving here!

My partner assures me that most people don't know they're turned on. And I calmly respond, "Well obviously that's why I'm siginalling them!" as I rapidly flash my headlights into oncoming traffic. My partner believes people don't know that either. Well then what DO people know?!


I look forward to next week's editorial and prime time radio ad please and thank you.