"Jeff Golden's two columns [Dec. 20 and 27] "¦ are a mundane repetition of old information that trivializes the complexity of transportation issues globally and locally "¦ These columns are wasted ink while Golden carries on some imaginary conversation with a handful of lurkers on the website. The Tidings can do better than to serve this bunk for its readers."

— Jan. 24 Letter to the Editor

Dear P:

Thanks for writing. This space can carry the name "Talk Newspaper" only if readers respond. At the same time — and this is sheer guesswork — I am picking up the faintest vibration that you don't like the column.

You've provided a useful reality check anyway. I keep wondering what makes some things that should be simple — like coming together with generally like-minded people to build a great community — so damned hard. You just reminded me. You probably know the Hopi Elder prayer that ends with the line "We are the ones we've been waiting for." It also says "At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves!" How easy to remember when watching other people slog through conflict. How easy to forget when you're one of the people.

I forgot the Hopi wisdom when I read the title of your letter: "Golden's columns are boring and insulting." This is my 49th Tidings column, so I won't tell you to give it a chance. And I won't debate your judgment (though I did try to imagine what my case might sound like: "Boring, huh? Well, check out this paragraph from last week. Man, I really nailed it there — I dare you to call THAT boring!" I don't think so). The fact that my columns bore and insult you doesn't matter to anyone but me — writer's vanity — and, if for some unclear reason you continue to read them, you.

What does matter, the reason I'm writing you at all, stems from this part of your letter: "[Complexities] cannot be reduced to calling drivers 'stupid,' as Golden does. Such ivory tower lecturing insults normal people who have no realistic alternatives in their hectic lives for getting their kids to day care and getting to work on a daily basis. It is too easy for idealists in Ashland with their noses in the clouds to prescribe lifestyle changes for other people." First of all, a big Amen, Brother P, to your basic point. Anyone who's puzzled by the regional heartburn about Ashland should probably get out more. Spending time in less affluent Rogue Valley towns to see what daily life is like, then reading or hearing our lofty advice about creating a Better World or becoming Better People, opens your eyes. What many outsiders hear from us, accurately or not, is Let them eat cake, which doesn't open anyone's mind to anything.

What's also true is that you somehow read a very different essay than I wrote, which doesn't come close to calling people wholly dependent on their cars for basic needs "stupid." What I did call stupid, and will again, is a national transportation system that daily uses super-tanker loads of a fuel that we kill and die for, in order to push down the road multi-ton boxes that often contain nothing but our own lone bodies, especially when we burn so much of that fuel traveling 0-3 miles per hour. That, P, is stupid. Really, truly stupid. But if anything, the people you describe are demonstrating the least stupid behavior, because they have fewer alternative options than you and I do.

Why does our feeble squabble matter? Because it brilliantly illustrates one of the common detours we keep taking from a sustained collective assault on our biggest problems. You're inviting me into the old spiral of snarky potshots that consume a ridiculous amount of our civic energy without giving anything back. I nearly took the bait, remembering tidbits from our past duels I might use to smack you back. But talk about boring.

I have to ask if you could have written this letter instead: "Dear Editor: Never a fan of Golden's boring column, I have to speak up after the last one. In blasting the stupidity of single-car transportation, he offered no alternatives for people whose income and location shackle them to the travel mode he criticizes. If we can't sustain the current system, what can we offer to struggling people as we make the transition to something else? I believe that part of the solution is ______ (you fill it in: car-share programs? Start-up subsidies for carpool organizers? Decentralized minivans? Workplace reorganization to reduce commuting? Or"¦?)." Then we'd be talking.

You are a smart man who cares, P. If you agree that we don't have much time, then what's the best way to use it?

Jeff Golden is the author of "As If We Were Grownups," "Forest Blood" and the new novel "Unafraid" (with excerpts at www.unafraidthebook.com).