Letters to The New Yinzer should be sent electronically to letters@newyinzer.com or physically through the USPS to: The New Yinzer, 277 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201.

From: MoPoet
Sent: Thu 4 Mar 04
Subject: Why I Learned To Spit

.....I LOVE......signed MoPoet

From: daniela
Sent: Thu 4 Mar 04
Subject: "I, Rhonda, Keep Track of the Family Calendar"

Thanks for "I, Rhonda, Keep Track of the Family Calendar."

Yes, Florida is the dick of America, and motherhood feels like children hanging on your sleeves.

I went to Florida once, and though I don't have children, I have had friends with children visit me.

Whatever my lame experience, this story made me see things I hadn't expected. Glad I read it.

Daniela

From: Sharon & Larry Wittig
Sent: Sat 6 Mar 04
Subject: Greg Wittig

I am Larry Wittig, Greg's 52 year old brother. The article is beautiful and very informative, as is the young man it's written about. Our father died when Greg and our sister Peggy were just kids. I Had just gotten out of the Air Force and was home only about two weeks when dad died. It was my job to tell them in the morning.
    Greg and I have talked about how hard it is for him to remember dad, but I see dad every I see Greg. Greg and my father (our father, same fellow) have a light that shines, much like a lighthouse that offers direction, safe passage and guidance. But the very human, in fact divine quality of love shines through both men to the extent, that they almost glow.
    I want to thank you for publishing this article, for Greg truly is an unsung hero. If you get to know my little brother, then you come away a better person because of the friendship, for the good qualities are brought out in you as they are in his children (his students, same people). That's another thing, humor,. it's part of his makeup. Well, again thanks. I am very proud of my brother; he will make a name for himself one day, and not because he is trying to, and that makes all the difference.

Larry Wittig

Sent: Wed 10 Mar 04
Subject: Requests From A Human Brewery

Dear Everyone,

As my third trimester winds down, I feel it necessary to get a few things off my chest, or belly, or whatever you want to call this big mass of flesh which has temporarily obscured the difference between the two aforementioned body parts. On behalf of pregnant women everywhere, I have a few simple requests.

First, I understand you're trying to be nice, however...if I don't know you, it's not appropriate for you to rub or otherwise touch my belly. Even if I do know you, you'd better ask my permission first. The fact that I'm pregnant does not suddenly entitle you people to treat me like a Buddha figurine. Instead, try asking me how it feels when the baby moves or what his name will be.

Second, I have no desire to hear about your sister's 56-hour labor, your cousin who had a three-eyed baby, your friend whose baby was stillborn, or how you died in childbirth. Why so many people, particularly strangers, feel it necessary to recount their horror stories about pregnancy and childbirth, is beyond me. Maybe it's your way of offering sympathy for my discomfort, maybe you're saying you understand the pain and suffering of childbirth -- great. I can't for the life of me understand why you're doing it and I wish you'd quit it because whatever your intentions, it's freaking me out. Instead, try talking about how wonderful it feels to become a parent, or to hold your newborn baby.

People don't have any idea how aggravating it is when they constantly ask, "no baby yet?" I for one would love nothing better than to give birth this instant, but it's out of my control. That question merely rubs in how horrible the waiting game is, and taunts me with the idea that for the moment, I'm merely someone's house. Instead, try asking me how I'm feeling, and feigning interest when I answer you.

Finally...If you see me in a checkout line with two things in my hand, it wouldn't kill you to let me check out before you. If you see me waiting on a bus or somewhere in a room with no empty chairs left, it wouldn't kill you to get up and let me sit down. It may, however, kill me, as after about ten minutes I start turning goofy colors, swell up, get splotchy and dizzy, and might vomit on you. And don't invite me out to a bar. I can't go.

The bottom line...pregnant ladies like to be treated with consideration and sensitivity, and appreciated as something more than a human brewery.

Thank you,

The Anonymous Very-Pregnant Woman

From: David C. Madden
Sent: Tue 30 Mar 04
Subject: the hots and colds of it here

Dear The New Yinzer,

Here in Nebraska the days are getting warmer but then recently they got colder, cloudier, and rainier to the point where it is chilly in my apartment again. The heat in the house I live in is out, and according to my landlords the controls for the heat are in apartment no. 1, which holds two lesbians that are in love with (I'm assuming) each other and (for certain, according to certain window decals) the University of Texas Longhorns. I'm not wanting to knock on their door and ask them to turn on the heat because they are larger than I am and because I avoid confrontation at all costs, even one as simple as this.

Remember the heater that got me through our winters together? The one on wheels kept in my cold-attic living room? I turned it on again last night, and in the pings of the heating oil and the smell of burning dust I thought about you and all your current successes.

Amid the cold, my apartment is in a state of disarray. I've put the television in the closet in an attempt to watch less of it, but I ran an extension cord and I watch just as much as before, now just sitting on the floor of my bedroom right in the doorway and feeling like a bit of a failure. Books and papers are everywhere in the living room, now televisionless. Last night I was making ramen noodles, and after snacking on the broken-off bits, I tossed the noodle-block into the boiling water and watched two or three insect pupae float to the surface. Convinced I injested some of these in my snacking, I went to the toilet and made myself vomit, and it seemed the smell of the stained bowl was enough to do the trick. It didn't help my anxiety. I have a sore throat now and I can feel the things living there, growing their little sacklike bodies into tapeworms and other awful parasites.

Did you know "cul-de-sac" means "sack bottom"? This ends up being important to and for a story I've shelved and may return to this summer. Right now I'm writing about puppets and the Just Say No program, and thinking it's all going to be okay.

Yinz's:
D.

ps: Someone's done that before, right? "Yinz's"? Sorry for that.

From: JUSTIN WUYCHECK
Sent: Thu 1 Apr 04
Subject: Piece of Prague

It is one of two times a year when the fluttering you see before you is an old leaf or a butterfly. Spring has reached Prague as I write this, though the air is still chilly. Cold flies stagger on their wings through my open windows; the heat seeps into their joints and - zing! - buzzing wanders my apartment. On my way to work, I have seen the decision of a cherry tree to bloom. I think it is a tentative, pensive tree for one side of its blooms is lush and full and bright white while it seems to reserve the other side. It does know it cannot turn back though.
    The fluttering was a butterfly - my thoughtful cherry tree, the early morning sun reflected off the gold crown of the National Theatre. As I go outside in the bright mornings of Prague, the apartments across the street are showering themselves with sunlight. Night sullies them into dull taupes and grays but they are yellow and blond in the morning. I guide my bike to work, at times racing autos with elàn - Czech drivers are very, very cautious of cyclists and (listen up America) share the road.
    The fluttering was an old leaf: The route to work is fraught with tram tracks that would swallow my thin tires, bad pavement and cobblestone that communicates some pretty awful things to my jocular vein. People always get in my way, and the block-by-block capricious change of two-way road to one-way is ridiculous. Then there is the air. Prague is very polluted, and I need only blow my nose to prove it. I haven't had a cigarette in months and yet I am a moderate smoker. The cherry tree is surrounded by cement and near a bus stop; dozens of times a day a bus coughs something thick and black towards the white petals.
    The fluttering was a butterfly: Some of the kids I teach (kids being 19 and 20 year-olds) invite me for a beer from time to time. They are polite young men, interested in foosball tables, fishing, graffiti and death metal.
    I get to know some Czechs. I begin to understand their culture. In my single evening class I have become friends with the doctorate students, and sometimes class is held in a bar. We talk, they learn, I learn. I am making friends.
    The fluttering was a falling leaf. My morning students can drive me nuts. I can drive them nuts. My speaking works on a system of corrective jerks and re-conoidering swings, not the best for students who are far below the description of "intermediate English-speakers". At 19 and 20, they are like US college freshmen, "I'm hear because I'm supposed to be hear, make me learn. [Seth, if you think "hear" will work keep it, please]." A few are motivated but often questions are met with a dull, watery, "I don't know," and games and exercises are eschewed for speaking in Czech.
    The fluttering was a butterfly: Class ends at noon and I've much of the day to lolly-gag, write, study German, cook, read, drink coffee with friends. I've found some great bakeries and a great coffee shop. Plenty of time to ponder.
    A leaf: I've plenty of time to ponder. Prague is a great city for that with its indecipherable, isolating language, the language with as many twists and narrow turns as the dark streets of Old Town. Through these bumpy corridors the cold wind of the Vlatava River can blow me right into a brood. The Prague sun doesn't help either, for by afternoon it often has retreated behind some clouds the color of vagaries or Czech stoicism.
    Fly and be free: I am where I want to be. That is, I'm not in the US. I have wanted to see a different part of the world, to see what others think, and now I have. And this summer, I will be teaching English in, get this, France. Somewhere in the Pyrenees, or the Alpine foothills, or Brittany, or near Cognac, I will teach English to the French! I pray (truly) to be in the Pyrenees, for that is biking country. I'll tackle some of those hills and hope to be passed by the Tour de France riders who make their way in August. Oh my goodness! After that I intend to go hiking with my dad in Spain along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. And after that?
    I'll be well into fall; at this point I have no job after France, no goal beyond the hike. I will have some money for a bit, enough to pay some debt and live on for a month or so. I will not return to Prague. The days will grow cold, the leaves will change color, but it will be one of the two times a year...

From: David C. Madden
Sent: Tue 6 Apr 04
Subject: addendum to my pussy-letter

Dear The New Yinzer,

The very evening after I sent you my last, the pussy-letter of feared confrontation, the lesbians turned on the heat on their own volition. I was warm, at last, and then sick for five days, and now it's almost seventy degrees out.

Nature, she is a fickle woman, unlike you:
D.