ABOUT MY "GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS" ...

I've recently been thanked for what for me have been generous contributions to local political causes, and I replied something like, "Thank you ... but they really aren't all that generous."

They aren't, and I'll share with the group part of why not.

In part, it's money my heirs fortunately don't need and which, unfortunately, I won't need for my illustrious career in film production (now, let us say, on long-term hiatus).

More relevant, it's money I'm withholding from commercial ventures, politicians, and charities that are practicing "Constant Contact" — actual name of actual company — far too literally.

Some people like a lot of stimulation, some a little. Me? I find it uncomfortable just to use washrooms where the light intensity is for women applying makeup. Also, many of us old folk were raised to respond and respond politely to requests. So I find the inundation of ads, catalogs, and, importantly here, appeals in varied media to be more than just annoying but mildly painful — and a serious matter when important mail gets lost in the mass and my not-*that*-old computer functions get slowed down.

A bit of street theater that moved me to action in the Vietnam Era was on the theme, "If You Don't Like the War Machine, Don't Feed it." The moral issues are much less urgent here, but I will resist feeding "Constant Contact" as both a corporation and a fund-raising strategy. Those groups I'm supporting, I'll mostly continue to support. Newbies who've bought my contact information — unless I've heard of you some other way, and you've got a really good cause (and maybe an "UNSUBSCRIBE" function that definitively stops your appeals) — you are likely out of luck.

Local folk and groups I know and who know how to ask and then back off: Yep, now and then you'll find me looking considerably more generous than you expected. Don't thank me too much, though: part of that money has been shifted from good people taking prudent advice — and succeeding at pissing me off enough to stop complaining and act.

Junk Mail Update: Thanksgiving 2016

I visited my family "back east" for Thanksgiving and had my US mail held for thirteen days. The postal service delivered my mail yesterday, and today I sorted through it, keeping a small number of catalogs that might prove useful for winter holiday presents — "Put Saturn back in the Saturnalia!" — plus appeals from worthy causes I might contribute to, plus a bill, a notice from Medicare of a whopping increase over this year in what I'll owe them in 2017, and one piece of hand-addressed, actual mail: a Christmas card accompanied by a succinct Christmas newsletter.

The rest of my mail was pretty pure junk and weighed in at 5.4 kg, or nearly 12 pounds.

The e-mail in the formal Junk file on my computer was in the hundreds.

I live alone and don't order all that much on line; I do give to those worthy causes, both charitable and political, but not excessively.

So: If you're looking for reasons why many Americans are turning off, tuning out, and at least partially dropping out of real-world communal life, add the data deluge and exhaustion over appeals for our money and (less often) time. I've decided the best thing to do with all those demands for my attention is to ignore almost all of them.

And so I'm closing out this post to toss into the recycling bin two substantial bags of various kinds of mail I refuse to deal with. And in this conscious narrowing of attention I am not alone.