On the other hand it is a very rare occurrence indeed when someone writes, or gets in touch with me by E-Mail, to engage me in a conversation about something they've read on Ferment Magazine. Even rarer are the times when I am sent a check for any item listed in its catalogues. As opposed to 35,000 hits a month, there can't be more than 72 E-mail messages a year from persons other than friends, who may bring up something from the website in conversation.
A more encouraging picture emerges when I put the words "Ferment Magazine" or "Roy Lisker" into a Google search engine and read the comments about my articles in blogs, other On-Line newsletters and related sources. These indicate that much more is going on than I would imagine from the direct correspondence. Of course the "ferment" is not as intense as I would like, but it is in the nature of literature as a profession that permanent dissatisfaction is intrinsic to its pursuit.
That I don't receive enough letters only means that I don't get the kinds of letters I would like . Indeed, as a consequence of maintaining a website featuring articles on many subjects of general interest, I have been put on mailing lists that guarantee that I receive 30 or more fund-appeal letters per week! These come from everybody: respectable organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, the United Farm Workers, the Tibetan Nuns, Madre, the Global Fund, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Oxfam, Planned Parenthood, the Emergency Rescue Committee, NAACP.... down to Save the Donkeys, Save the Horses, Save the Alley Cats, Cure Harelip, the New York City Legal Aid Society, theater companies in Texas, Save Israel from the Arabs, Elect a Congressman (in Minnesota, Vermont, California, even Connecticut!...
Everyone wants money. For a number of years I've been a regular contributor to a personal list of organizations. Letters from all the others are discarded, although I am sometimes moved enough by them to send a 1-time contribution. This leads to immediate retribution in the form of new missives from all related organizations. They stuff up my mailbox and can cause really serious problems when I travel. When I returned from Europe in November 2009 after being away for 100 days, I had to get rid of 500 fund appeal letters!
Then, for awhile, I was returning all fund appeal letters containing an envelope with "No Postage Necessary" on the upper right corner. With them I included a note explaining that, because of the sheer volume of fund-appeal letters I no longer donated-to anybody. Needless to say, this has not had the slightest effect. Recently I've gotten into the habit of stuffing the literature from one organization into the envelope of another and sending it back. If possible I try to dump at least 3 ounces of trash into each envelope to increase the postal expense at the other end as much as possible.
It continues to be a source of chronic distress until I realized that the responses I was looking for from the readers of Ferment Magazine were coming to me in the form of the 30 fund-appeal letters per week. These are the public response to Ferment Magazine: In factEverybody wants to get in touch with me!
It is characteristic of the organizations that ask for money, that they want you to know all about the good deeds they are doing to make the world a better place. Even the "Save the Alley Cats" organization gives me potentially valuable statistics about the numbers of homeless cats in America. The problems of a theatre in Texas are not without interest. How arethe Tibetan Nuns making out in Dharmasala? What is going on in fact with the Campesino grape pickers in California? How dire is the medical situation in Somalia?
All in all it must be admitted that this amounts to a true dialogue. Forget about the money stuff! Look upon these letters as windows to the great world, the kind of thing I voluntarily seek out when I take out a DVD from the local library about medical volunteers in Afghanistan, or the fate of widows in India. The true public response to the mass of writings I'm loading onto Ferment Magazine is in the fund appeal letters, my way of being a participant in the modern-day Republic of Letters. They are the message from the world that, in all other respects, "never writes to me"
The second letter was from Planned Parenthood. If I would like to "help women, men and adolescents throughout the Americas and the Caribbean to receive family planning services" I can send it something between $35 to $150.
After sending that nonsense to the trash basket, I read what the letter had to say. I learned that all abortions are forbidden in Chile; no surprise, that's how we got Pinochet. That there are places in Bolivia where one must walk for a whole day to pick up a condom. That testing positive for HIV in the Dominican Republic can lead to social ostracism.
Thank you, Planned Parenthood; I invite you in turn to browse the pages of Ferment Magazine for useful knowledge and valuable suggestions for dealing with serious political matters in today's world.
Of course, none of these organizations are in the least interested in my ideas; they just want my money. I've got the drop on them: I'm very interested in what they have to tell me but I won't send them anything.