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I called the city with a business tax question. “All of our representatives are currently serving other customers,” a recording informed me. Customers? I thought, incredulous. Customers? I hung up and called back to listen again. “All of our representatives are currently serving other customers,” the calm, male voice said again. I hung up a second time. This was an honest misspeak, a habit of phrase. I probably wouldn’t have noticed were it not for Citizens United, the upcoming election, and the works I’ve read recently by Robert Macfarlane on the intimate relationship between how we live on the land and our landscape vocabulary, and Robin Wall Kimmerer on the grammar of animacy and how language defines the boundaries of our knowing. Words are not passive. Language shapes our understanding of the world as much as the world we live in shapes our language. “Customers” caught my attention and held it because it is so easy to imagine citizens of a democracy becoming customers of plutocracy. Sometimes it feels like we already are. VOTE. The General Election is this Tuesday. Read voters’ guides. Read the newspaper. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Fill out your ballot and post it or drop it in one of the ballot boxes. Whatever you think of our national politics, local politics matter, and here YOUR VOTE COUNTS. Sophie Owner | Baker  TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot Seedy Buckwheat Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Gingersnap Oat Scone Gingerbread Cake Apple Cake with Cultured Cream Orange Cardamom Bread Pudding Shortbread Buckwheat Crisps FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 8 weeks remaining Every Wednesday, OCT 2 - DEC 18 Pickup downtown, Birchwood, Fairhaven This week: Mountain Rye, Red & White, RUGBROD Comments are closed.
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