Henrietta Hay's Column

It's time to re-read last year's mail. One of the greatest things about writing a column is finding that somebody reads it. The great majority of your comments have been great -- friendly, informative, funny or all of the above. This year there were only couple that I needed to drop in the wastebasket with a fire extinguisher handy. But you can't please everybody. One of the mottoes hanging over my desk says, "If you can't annoy someone there is little point in writing."

One long letter started with, "...I've reached a zero tolerance for those who support ideas oppositional to a vision of American civilization clearly established by our founding fathers." Or, in simpler terms, any ideas with which he does not personally agree. His complaint was the existence in libraries of computers with Internet access, which he feels is destroying civilization, as we know it.

My objection to posting the Ten Commandments in every schoolroom in America brought this: "I hope you read this since you are so against God and everything He stands for." And he sent me an article by Gary Bauer, who affects me the way Hillary does Rush Limbaugh.

But the angriest letters came from the Hillary-haters. "Your unwarranted praise for the first bitch cannot go unanswered." Well, it could have.

One encouraging thing I learned. There are a lot more "F" word (feminists) and "L" word (liberals) in this community than most people realize.

One reader (well, two since son Dave also argued the point) questioned my saying that the "purists" would write the Roman numeral MDCCCCLXXXXVIIII for 1999. They both preferred MCMXCIX. The next year is easier: MM.

After I wrote about the LaVeta Hotel in Gunnison, a local man called and told me that a lot of the timbers from the old ballroom were salvaged and used by the architect to give a sense of history in one of the new banks in Gunnison.

I learned a lot about the wild horses of the western slope. Some of the mares aren't too smart. The little colt that was born on the edge of a cliff and fell down 60 feet when it tried to stand on its wobbly legs was rescued and "adopted" by a two-legged mama. The "Wild Horse Lady" kept me informed about baby Ariel, who survived and is thriving.

The other side of the porno in the library issue was the wonderful response from librarians all across the country when the A. L. A. sent the column on Governor Owens' veto of the library aid bill out over their net. From Minnesota, "Keep up the good fight in Colorado," with an offer to trade Jesse Ventura for Bill Owens. I rejected the offer. I may regret it.

I wrote that Winston Churchill's mother had given birth to him in a ladies' room during a dance. One of my FR's (Faithful Reader) sent a post card with a picture of the well-appointed bedroom in Blenheim Palace where the event really took place. But the FR added, "But we all know his mother was dancing too vigorously!"

There were lots of responses to the Women's Cup soccer game column. One reader said, "I would have been a professional athlete but I'm so excited for the generations of young women coming up who now have a whole team of role models." And a male reader wrote, tongue in cheek no doubt, but delightful nonetheless, "I enjoyed your article on the black bra. Very insightful."

On the topic of girls' athletics, one professional male friend who shall be nameless wrote, "I don't get my daughter to read the paper very often, but I'm going to try my darndest to get her to read you this week." (((This was my editor!)))

This year most of you communicated by e-mail, and I appreciated every single message (well, almost all of them!), and answered all that I could. Most were, as I said before, friendly, informative, funny or all of the above. I made some new friends and renewed some old contacts. You gave me a great year. You can't write a column in a vacuum. Thank you.