Letters to the Editor
Leeandra Nolting
Published Letters: 177 Editor's Choice: 10
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I like the idea of adult-sized playground equipment!
[Read the article: Sweatin' to the arcade oldies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Come on, the monkey bars and swings are fun!
When I was teaching preschool, I got to play on the equipment with the kids, but it was all too damn small.
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who doesn't have a range of sizes in their closet?
[Read the article: Study: Most women "disordered eaters"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm serious--especially for women, weight fluctuates within a certain degree naturally. Mine can go a full five pounds in either direction depending on the time of the month--so without doing any special exercising/dieting (other than trying to eat a more-or-less balanced diet), I've got a ten-pound range to work with. So I have jeans in three sizes, wrap dresses, drawstring skirts, etc.
I was recently trying vainly to convince someone that my needing to wear a girdle with a specific dress doesn't mean I'm fat--it only means that this particular dress wasn't custom-tailored to my figure. (I'd need to lose five pounds to make it fit without the girdle, and even then it'd be lumpy at the middle because of the fabric/cut of the dress.) Since I'm at a healthy weight and I don't wear this particular dress very often, I'm of the opinion that the healthier thing to do would be to put on the damn girdle and forget about it.
I didn't have much luck convincing him of the wisdom behind this. Such is the state we've come to.
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this is about miscommunication, not sex
[Read the article: Lust in translation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]An old joke:
Two southern belles are in rocking chairs on the veranda, sipping mint juleps. The first keeps prattling on about her husband Beauregard, how he took her to Europe, how he bought her a diamond necklace, how he always brings her flowers, on and on. The second keeps responding with, "That's nice..."
The first asks, "Well, what does your husband do for you?"
The second replies, "He sent me to finishing school."
The first asks, "Finishing school? What did you need with finishing school?"
The second replies, "That's where they taught me to say 'That's nice...' instead of 'Fuck you.'"
The problem isn't males, or females, or expected sexual behaviors from either. It's that in our culture the two sexes are reared very differently with regard to acceptable speech.
From the time they can talk, most boys are taught to speak their minds directly even to people who might disagree with them, whereas most girls are taught to "be sweet," which often translates to being very indirect, especially when they are afraid of causing disagreement. You don't undo 18+ years of socialization in an instant.
I used to teach freshman composition--I saw this problem of indirect communication all the time when assigning argumentative papers, and it happened more frequently in girls' essays than in boys'.
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Mayberry with meth labs...
[Read the article: When Democrats chase Hoosiers and Region Rats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I grew up in Greensburg, Indiana, in the southeastern part of the state. Our proudest accomplishments are 1.) making 1/4 of all the world's water faucets and 2.) when a bird or a squirrel back in the 1800s shat out an aspen seed on the roof of our courthouse tower, it took root--and so far, we haven't managed to accidentally kill the Tower Tree.
I have, framed on my kitchen wall in New Orleans, a page from a 2003 freebie calendar put out by the Standard Fertilizer Company in my hometown. Their slogan was--and I am not making this up--"78 Years of Prompt Dead Animal Service." They are also "Dealers in Hides, Tallow, and Restaurant Grease" and have been "Recyclers of Animal By-products Since 1925."
I worked as a reporter for the radio station in Greensburg in high school and during breaks from college. I had a key to the fire department because I'd have to go there (as well as to the police department and the jail) at 5 AM to find out whose house burned down the night before/ whose field the underage kids were drinking in/ who got arrested for D.U.I., beating his wife, not paying child support, possession of under 30 grams of marijuana, or failure to appear on court on one of the above charges.
At least once a week the sheriff's department would get a call about cows loose on Northeast 80, and I always made sure that made the 6 o'clock news whenever that happened.
I also did the Sunday morning show for a while--6 hours of June Carter interspersed with recorded programs from the local churches. One of them ("This is the Church News and Gospel Tidings Broadcast from the First Church of God with the Reverend Robert Browning..."--I regret I can't imitate his voice in type) frequently featured a woman playing hymns with a violin bow on a handsaw.
Religiously, pretty much everybody there is 1.) a member of one of the conservative, fundamentalist, or evangelical Protestant denominations 2.) a member of St. Mary's Catholic Church or 3.) Amish. Ethnically, pretty much everybody is descended from German immigrants, except for the Japanese factory owners and the recent wave of Mexican immigrants.
No Democrat is going to win Greensburg (or other towns in southern Indiana) unless he/she says 1.) "This is how I'm gonna fight abortion," 2.) "This is how I'm going protect your family farms/ bring back the factories," 3.) "Gay marriage ain't marriage," and 4.) "You get to keep your guns."
Even then, it's gonna be an uphill battle.
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of course, even "Sara" (Iran's version of Barbie)...
[Read the article: Iranian prosecutor: Banish Barbie!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...will, when adults aren't around, spend most of her time naked, or in an evening gown made from an old sock, having sex with other "Saras." And after a few years, she'll have ballpoint pen tattoos, a crew cut, and be missing key limbs.
Kids will be kids, whether in America or Iran, and a Barbie by any other name will still get treated like a Barbie.