The Rogue Voice

A LITERARY JOURNAL WITH AN EDGE

October 01, 2007

Letters and comic



If two liberal minded hippie swingsters like Duane and Bethany can do it, we can too. You can be as freaky and free spirited as you want, but out of courtesy, keep your perversions private.


Peas in a pod
Dear Duane Hagabee:
We were thrilled to have our little letter answered by such a touching defense of our county. We feel as if we know you, Duane and Bethany. We could not agree more with your sensitive, inspiring view of our unique lifestyle and are surprised The Rogue Voice placed your article alongside its usual irrelevant drivel. It is a refreshing change, and we hope to hear from you again now that the Cayucos Breeze has gone out of business. Why else would we open The Rogue Voice but to read you?

Doug and Anne Cayucos, Calif.


What about guns?
For Duane Hagabee:
I enjoyed your article on SLO Town, though I live up here in North County. A crackpot lefty paper like The Rogue rag doesn’t fly up here. A friend gave it to me to read your article. Since I agree with most of what you say, I would like to know your opinion on guns. I shoot ground squirrels and varmints that threaten the animals on my ranch. You’ve got an attitude I don’t quite understand, but I’d like to hear how you think about gun control and having the right to defend yourself.

Warren Kibbling Paso Robles, Calif.

We can do it
Dear Editor:
Duane Hagabee’s letter to Rogue Voice in the September edition [“In defense of the SLO life”] should be if nothing else, an eye opener to all. Hagabee put forth an inspired defense for his kind. Who are we anyway…the window washers, house painters, or tile-layers of America to bash on a life we ALL wish we had but are too lazy to achieve? This poor guy worked his way from the bottom…the very bottom, mind you, of his father’s real estate company to get to where he is today. He and his wife are humanitarians, they are open to extending their friendship to even the lesbiest of lesbians, and they have even been known to take time out of their busy daily routine to stop and pet small black children meandering through their local grocery store. They deal with the same problems you and I face…unreliable tile guys…where to dock the yacht in the off-season…these are real problems people, and we should be sympathetic. Unfortunately, none of us losers will put down our rocks glasses long enough to see that, and we will only taste “the good life” if we are so lucky to be hired by the Hagabees and bask vicariously in their glory while choking on tile dust and inhaling paint fumes. The SLO life IS for everyone…it’s up to us to get on board. If two liberal minded hippie swingsters like Duane and Bethany can do it, we can too.

Jeff Bohrer

Hagabee peccadillos
Dear Mr. Warde:
Hello and thank you for producing as fine a literary rag as you do. I had the occasion to read your publication for the first time recently (Sept. 2007, Vol. 2, No. 12) and found it to be an amazing mirror of the community as you will give just about any asshole the opportunity to speak his or her mind. I say asshole particularly with Duane Hagabee’s “In defense of the SLO Life” in mind. That being the case here’s my rant in response to that article.
I would like to respond to several points Duane Hagabee made:
Pretentious—Pretentious may not have been a very accurate adjective to hurl at SLO residents. However, judging by Hagabee’s comments about racial minorities (if he is in fact a representative SLO specimen) I’d say bigoted, class-conscious, elitist, separatist, mired and fettered by the stereotypes he perpetuates in assuming, wholesale, that minorities are all poor, and have nothing else to do than loiter, pick crops, and wash cars, would fit better. I find it appalling how he objectifies minorities and how he classifies them as oddities and curiosities to his children. I can hear him rallying his family for an outing, “Hey, let’s go to the poor part of town and ogle the pickaninies. Maybe we can fondle one!” Translated, “Let's go to the zoo and pet the monkeys.”
Utopian Society—Who in their right mind would rail against such a compliment? His examples of his distress at living here are only things a rich man living in Utopia would complain about. And graffiti making front-page news? In what other kind of community but a small, well-run, relaxed one, would ever consider graffiti headline news? Utopia? Maybe not. But SLO is much closer to Eden than many other locales.
Straight-laced and conservative—There’s a reason for that. Civilized people tend to keep their personal lives personal, shared only between their family and closest of friends. You can be as freaky and free spirited as you want, but out of courtesy, keep your perversions private. That’s not to say that I advocate hypocrisy. Sure, own your freakishness, but be mindful of your neighbor. The family in the car next to you might not want to watch a middle-aged man getting sucked off by his middle-aged wife. And about those trophy lesbians. They are unique and complex human beings possessed of an entire gamut of human emotions and behaviors. They are not a Boy Scout badge of Diversity and Tolerance to be sported about in front of his friends in order to garner their accolades for being so enlightened.
There is some hope for Mr. Hagabee, though. For the example, he gives of his silliness with the Groucho Marx routine and targeting his children with electric powered shopping carts (bravo for the Green Movement), I congratulate him. I am left a bit puzzled by his wife’s breast-feeding activism, or rather by his including it in his denial of conservatism. Is he to imply that public breast-feeding is somehow contrary to conservative parenting? Finally, the perv in me wants to know about their public performances. Audience participation? Or should I have kept that pecadillo private?

Jason Duran San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Nothing like the Central Coast
Hi Stacey:
I was in Cayucos recently, staying in a friend's family beach cabin when I grabbed your paper at the coffee shop. I’m back in Colorado Springs now and finally got to read a bit of it. It’s…different.
Then you reeled me in with your conservative talk—interesting, a conservative in California (other than me, of course). I’m native to the Central Coast, went to school in Paso, Templeton and Atascadero. I’ve since moved away (clearly) but I was reading through your paper to see that people were complaining about SLO town.
I’ve lived in eight different states and Germany. I’ve been in the U.S. Army and am married to a military man who does missile defense. The Central Coast is simply the best place I’ve ever lived. The people are friendly. People DO NOT talk to others in other states like they do on the CC. The scenery is the best. The planning departments have their heads on straight. The trash actually gets picked up in most places. The landscaping is incomparable. The ability to do almost anything—literally, with skiing just a few hours away—is beyond compare.
Tell whoever was complaining to move to Kansas for a while. Ha. I almost got strung up, a loud female who drinks beer and tells it like it is—they did NOT know what to do with me there.
Colorado Springs has its appeal, but it’s still not as cool as the CC. Nothing is. Literally.

MaryAnna Clemons Colorado Springs, Colo.

Yoga’s not all sexual
Dear Mr. Jarrattee:
I take a yoga class at my gym in Morro Bay and am one of those “babes” or “specimens” you referred to in your little article about yoga. I love yoga and it has changed my life. I have lost 35 pounds and there are people in our gym like you who think it’s all sexual and I think that’s sad. To suggest that I go to my gym only to show men my “rock hard ass” in my “skin tight outfit” shows a real lack of spirituality in you. Yoga is where the body and mind become one through poses meant to bring a sense of well-being to you. Maybe you should try it. No wait, I take it back—maybe not. Stay on your stationary bike and try to watch babes like me. I’m sure in time you will be forced to go over to one of the computerized bikes and I’m sure the gym will have to block out all the windows and then you will have ruined yoga for everyone.

Jenna Crowley Morro Bay, Calif.

Not that banal?
Dear Stacey:
My wife of 58 years and I both enjoy reading your “Voice” each month. The Voice is a most important reconfirmation of the question “am I thinking right?” that all politically independent, serious, in our minds, voters continually ask themselves….
This latest issue, to us, was “the worst of issues and the best of issues.” Let me explain: Your Hagabee piece may have been politically well intentioned—giving the other side of the debate and drawing a blueprint of the type of person who might agree with the present White House agenda—but it was so bizarre that it became obvious that it was simply a ruse and a very crude one to boot. Would that it had been a real letter, written well, it could have been so much more effective at showing what the country is really up against. The “other side” is not that banal. They are mostly good people who are either blinded by life-long religious fear tactics or just not so good at “critical thinking.” Surely you can find any number of people anxious to debate you in print that can illustrate those shortcomings honestly. As it was presented, the article turned us off and we consider ourselves as average political independents. We realize it was a tongue-in-cheek bit meant to be bizarre but it just didn’t ring for us as a good way to reinforce the liberal image—which can use some reinforcing.
On the other hand:
The best of times was your on-the-mark piece on Warren G. Harding; it was very well done—informative and engaging. This one really hit home-your upbringing sounds quite parallel with ours. All raised in longstanding conservative Republican families, we all changed our thinking during the Reagan years and most decidedly were vindicated in having changed our views with the present administration (can’t bring myself to even type his name).
We will make copies and use them to argue our points of view with our republican friends.
We do really look forward to each month’s Rogue Voice.

Jim and Bev Maul San Luis Obispo

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