We love it when people e-mail us their letters to the editor, rather than mailing them conventionally or bringing by the office, because then we don’t have to type them into the system. It saves time and gets folks’ letters into the paper faster.
However, this whole Internet thing isn’t perfect. Once every couple of months somebody will e-mail me a letter to the editor, and for whatever reason it’s unreadable or corrupt or there’s some sort of odd technical issue (Right now, I’m trying to deal with the whole issue of reading .docx files because I’m on a Mac — they claim the built-in text reading file should open it, but I just get gobbledy gook). I e-mail the writer back to let them know there’s a problem, but sometimes I get no response. I got an unreadable letter to the editor last week, but the sender has not responded to me and so his or her letter can’t be published.
If you’re sending a letter to the editor through e-mail, make sure you’re using an e-mail address that you check on a regular basis. If there’s an issue with running your letter, you’ll never know otherwise and wonder why we haven’t run it. Failing that, if you e-mail in a letter to the editor and don’t see it in about two weeks, give us a call to find out what’s going on. Sometimes letters get lost in cyberspace and we never receive them at all.
I want to say congratulations to Jim Duarte. About 1981 Jim and Debbie opened up their home to me when I arrived in Barstow and had no place to go. Debbie taught me how to cook mexican style and Jim always showed his love for sports even then and his care for humanity and his students. Thanks Jim and Debbie for being a large part of my life that you probably never thought of. Today just on a whim I opened up the Desert Dispatch online and there you were, Jim - retiring. Have fun traveling and God speed.
Kathie Norfleet (Wing)