Open letter to the busybodies of Cambridge

Dear Busybody at Dorchester Hospital,

Thank you for your concern over my dog.  Silly me thought a cloudy, forty-five degree day would be a fine day for me and my dog to run my route.  Instead of spending ten to twelve hours home alone wondering if I'm coming home, I thought my dog would be better off with me.  We take several walks along the river, share lunch, and sniff around a couple of other places along my route.  At her age, she doesn't care to chase anything anymore, but she still enjoys sniffing around a field.

She mostly sleeps while I run my route - nestled on her bedding on the floor right under the heat.  Chihuahuas are cold by nature, but she's older now and needs to get practically on top of a heat source.  I never thought she might rather be home, alone, under the covers on the couch rather than be with me under covers with gentle heat warming her bones.

Don't get me wrong.  Even though she's on the floor sleeping most of the day, she knows the timing of our stops.  She jumps up on the seat in anticipation.  Amazing how dogs can know that.  The five to fifteen minutes stop every hour and a half or so seems to be enough for her.  Many days, she gets out, sniffs and marks her spot, then returns to the car.  Some days are just too cold or wet for her and she'd rather be under the warm heat.  Other days, she sniffs around a little longer before she's ready to go.

I didn't always work ten or more hours a day with no holidays or vacations.  Family situations change and my family's routine - including both of my dogs' - had to be changed.  Yes, my other half has the more active dog all day because that route affords more rabbit hunting time. 

Anonymous note left on my car by a busybody

Wait a minute.  Why am I explaining this?  It takes a special sort of fortitude to leave an anonymous note rudely written for a stranger that relies solely on unfounded assumptions and accusations.  Now I could be wrong so please, enlighten me as to why you felt compelled to step in my business armed with nothing more than you saw my dog in the car.

Now my turn to get condescendingly rude as you did over my dog. 

If you cared about your fellow man as much as you pretend to care about my dog, the world would be a much better - and more polite - place.  Let's start with your propensity to write notes instructing a stranger what to do.  Why not put that God-given talent of yours to good use.  Start writing your elected officials to better our communities, state, and country for everyone. 

Suddenly speechless?  Let me help you get started. 

Demand across the board pay cuts in government pay.  They've forgotten they're public servants.  If they think minimum wage is good enough for us common folk, it's good enough for them.  They work for us and shouldn't be making more than us. 

Ask them for their five, ten, and twenty-five year economic growth plans.  Go through them and edit, add, and delete items you feel need to be changed.  They aren't doing a bang up job bringing meaningful work to Dorchester County so help them out.

Push your state officials to enact a living wage.  Currently Maryland's wage sits at $8.75 per hour, but while many push for a $15 per hour living wage, it could arguably be set higher.  Almost half the employees living in Dorchester County would get a pay raise if the $15 per hour living wage were enacted across the state.

Get your local and state officials to make the county, and Maryland, more small business friendly.  If they can't attract good paying jobs to the county (good paying being closer to a living wage rather than the minimum wage) and no one wants to cork the growing income inequality and stop the shrinking middle class, then give the citizens the tools they need to work for themselves.

Fight to protect the family owned farms and independent watermen struggling to earn a decent living under increasingly burdensome regulations mostly designed to put them out of business.  The farms are being sold to developers to build a new community or business and the watermen are moving to North Carolina or the Gulf states where the fishing is more profitable.  Once the farms are paved over and the watermen leave, there is no getting them back.  Two noted Delmarva cultures will have died.

Not that anyone asked my opinion but
 please ask for a steak in every dog dish

You get the idea.  There's a lot of struggling families out there living from paycheck to paycheck and are one major accident or health event from losing everything.  If that event happened to me, where would my dog sleep then?  In the car with me, but I reckon you'd be compelled to give me another pink note.

If you love your neighbors, you wouldn't be making baseless and crass assumptions about why they left their dog in a car on a cloudy, cool winter's day and then chastising them in writing for it. You would be writing your elected officials and doing what you can to improve the economic health of the community so that most of your neighbors wouldn't need to work ten or more hours a day, six days a week, to make ends meet.

And please, don't write your elected officials on a pink sticky note.  It's really hard for anyone to take someone who writes on pink sticky notes seriously.

 

Posted by Five Drunk Rednecks