It's time to trash the junk mail!

RoundUp

Even the least interested citizen knows when election season has arrived by the avalanche of junk mail that starts pouring into the mailbox. These colorful mail outs were collected at one residence inside a two week period. Whew! The mind wanders through fruitless attempts to compute all the time, ink, money and trees that go into producing them . . . then to that poor postal carrier who has to lug 'em around to everybody's mailboxes. What are we supposed to do with them all!? Are the best candidates the ones with the most mailers with pretty pictures, or are they the ones with the biggest campaign bankrolls and thus suspicious from the get-go? Then we realize that it becomes our responsibility, as good citizens, to recycle every last piece. Well that's just another danged unfunded mandate on the public. Maybe, as an act of civil disobedience, we decide to throw them on the burn pile out back and set all the chemicals adrift into the air we all share and breathe. "Hah ha," we think, "a few of those airborne molecules are sure to drift into the nostrils of those smiling politicians. That'll teach 'em to pollute our air and mailboxes." Lest we blow a fuse, we try not imagining the thousands more political yard signs that will join the mailers on the burn pile. Hope springs eternal, however. There's a lonely candidate out there who has declined to play the political yard sign game. Said he favors less clutter, clean air, and would campaign by e-mail. Now that's a true 21st century candidate, and hopefully the beginning of a trend in our parts. For that alone, he certainly has our support.

–B. Ochoa