FAN Bulletin 911

December 24, 2007

Dear All,

We were not surprised when donations slowed to a trickle yesterday, as I am sure most of readers were getting ready for Christmas Day and all the other things we do at this time of year. However, we did add another $423 to make our new total $23,278. No Angels with another matching grant challenge yet, but I am hopeful that we will find one before New Year’s Eve to make our last week of fund raising for our 2008 fighting fund, more exciting and even more productive.

Thank you to all 106 people who have so very generously contributed so far. By reaching our mini-goals long before expected, you have exceeded our wildest expectations.

There will be no bulletin tomorrow – we all deserve a break. The next one will be on December 26.

Meanwhile, may we wish you all a wonderful holiday, however you celebrate it.

As we think of next year, I would like to share with you this quote from William James (1842-1910) a shorter version of which I first saw painted on the side of Pete Seeger’s barn in Beacon, NY. In many ways it sums up the long battle against the mighty forces that promote fluoridation in the handful of countries which still support this silly practice. I also offer it in memory of two tireless fighters against fluoridation who passed away in 2007: Martha Bevis from Texas and Dr. Richard Foulkes, from British Columbia. Thanks also to Pete Seeger who kindly dictated this to me over the phone this morning.

”“As for me my bed is made. I am against bigness and greatness in all its forms and with the invisible, molecular moral forces which move from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets or like the capillary oozing of water and yet rending the hardest monuments of man’s pride, if you give them time.
 
The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, underdog always, till history comes, after they are long dead and puts them on the top.” (In a letter from William James to Mrs. Henry Whitman, June 7, 1899, published in Letters of William James, edited by his son Henry James, Volume 2, P.90, Published by Atlantic Monthly press, 1920.)

From one rootlet to many others, here’s to success in the year to come. Let’s hope that the vast majority of us are still around to celebrate when this “monument of man’s pride” meets its inevitable demise.

Paul Connett