“Oh wow George, we have had 13 Letters to the Editor; that’s way more than we have ever had. Maybe you want to write a few words about it,”…so spoke Christy Ross, our very kind Editor just starting her new job as a High School English teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. And, yes, 13 letters in sultry over 90-degree weather bespeaks really engaged readers.
It’s true, we don’t get a lot of letters so when I do speak to a reader and almost as an afterthought he tells me how good the paper is, with the implication that I get these compliments all the time, I say “No, we get very few compliments. People just assume the paper is so good we must be continually buoyed by lavish outpourings of praise.”
That the paper is as good as it is is due solely to our regular contributors who are professionals in the fields they write about (in the July issue we had three doctors write).
As the Publisher, I have few disciplines other than that articles should be about the West Village and right now nothing is more important than to offer Dr. Davis, the head of Mount Sinai, compelling reasons (and perhaps a generous grant) to locate the proposed 70-bed hospital closer to the former location of St. Vincent’s right here in the West Village.
But it is not what I alone think. One of our new contributors, who is 88, when I talked of restoring a hospital declared, “St. Vincent’s saved my life. If the emergency room had not been minutes away I would be dead now.” I, of course, asked her to write a Letter to the Editor.”
