Monthly Archives: March 2011

Rain Gutters

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Are rain gutters really necessary?

And in particular, are rain gutters that get filled with sludge and don’t drain, even when you’ve cleaned them once this season, and consequently back up and splash water against one corner of the house where the flashing is adequate except when the ran gutter backs up and splashes water against it, when water leaks inside and drips through the ceiling of the family room, are gutters such as this, to wit, the gutters over the second floor windows outside my bedroom, really necessary? Would there be some horrible catastrophe if I had them yanked out and just let the water run where it will?

Or would I just discover more places where the flashing is mostly adequate?

From Flannery’s Letters

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Flannery O’Connor sold one of her stories for production on TV. A couple of mentions of this in her letters:

I have just learned via one of those gossip columns that the story I sold for a TV play is going to be put on in the spring and that a tap-dancer by the name of Gene Kelly is going to make his tellyvision debut in it. The punishment always fits the crime. They must be going to make a musical out of it. This is the story about Mr. Shiftlet who marries the old woman’s idiot daughter.

And then, later,

I am writing my agent to make haste and sell all my stories for musical comedies. There ought to be enough tap dancers around to take care of them, and there’s always Elvis Presley. Momenti mori.