Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 138 Editor's Choice: 12
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WOW!
[Read the article: Sioux leader vows to bring Planned Parenthood to S.D. reservation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That is the best news I've heard all day! Kudos to the Cecilia Fire Thunder for stepping up to the plate. Yeah, where do I send the check?
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Exposure is key
[Read the article: Chinese adoptions raise questions of identity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know a young woman that was adopted from Korea as an infant, by a white family in a European country. Her family told me that she never really wanted to hear anything about her Korean heritage. Not just disinterest, but with a certain tinge of anti-interest. Then she came to visit us, in the San Francisco Bay area, where there are lots of people of Asian heritage, on the streets, in the grocery stores, at the movies. I remember her making a comment about never having seen so many people before, that looked like herself. She didn't say much else on the subject. But a few months later, I heard that she was thinking about maybe taking a trip to Korea.
Even just simple exposure to other kids that "look like them", for example the Chinese dancing classes, can help kids to know that there really truly is a whole world of diversity out there. You certainly don't see much of that on TV - white middle-class families as far as the eye can see. I'm not sure what the root of this girl's anti-interest was - the need to feel "white" like her family and friends, the thought that Asia was just a poor place to be escaped from, or just the need to move toward the future instead of looking back at the past. Maybe it was just learning that it doesn't have to be a choice between door #1 and door #2, that there are a whole world of diversity, and that she can have both. Whatever it is, and whether she goes to Asia or not, I'm happy for her.
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Another market for these centers
[Read the article: Mom's love, prechopped and wrapped to go]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's a whole other market for these centers, too - the smaller scale. Seniors, singles, or empty nesters. My mother is on her own now. She almost never eats casseroles anymore. How difficult is it to cook when you're using an eighth of a cup of chopped onions, a quarter can of that cream of mushroom soup instead of a full one, etc. And then figuring out how to deal with the leftovers, either of the other 3/4 can of soup, or a huge tray of tuna casserole. With scaled-down recipes and smaller containers for microwaving, she could make single- or double-serving-sized casseroles instead of "dinner for six".
This would work for both men and women. I'm sure there's probably some widowers out there that "don't have anyone to cook for them anymore", that would appreciate having someone step them through these recipes. And it would be a social occasion as well. But then I suppose if there were too many of these "love connections", these people might not need the company's services anymore!
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Naughty Hillary
[Read the article: Hillary's half-assed housekeeping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, really, Hillary should not have spent so much time worrying about nationwide, affordable health care for all and spent more time worrying about redecorating the living quarters. What was she thinking?
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Excellent article!
[Read the article: Glamour exposes "the new lies about women's health"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow. This was an excellent article, the depth of which I would expect to see in science magazines and political activist magazines. If someone had just handed me the text, I never would have guessed that it was from Glamour magazine. I hope that a lot of women, who maybe haven't been reading the newspaper in detail and been keeping track of these offenses, will have their eyes opened. I think that a lot of socially-liberal, financially conservative Republican women especially will get ticked off by what this administration is doing. And I hope they all vote in November.
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Clarifying Anonymous for Robert Franklin
[Read the article: Blaming the victims]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Robert Franklin, I'm sure that what Anonymous meant was, your stats about Vietnam and Iraq are not RELEVANT to the discussion of "unprovoked violence". As for "workplace accidents", puh-lease! You can't possibly lump falling off a ladder at work as "violence against men". The only one of your four comments that may be relevant to this discussion is the murder statistic. So, feel free to tell us more about that (seriously, not trying to be obnoxious).
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Response to Robert Franklin
[Read the article: Blaming the victims]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I did read what you wrote, Robert, and I don't believe I've misunderstood at all. You said:
"And of course, given that there's no public indignation, the facts that 98% of soldiers killed in Iraq and close to 100% in Viet Nam were men, and that victims of workplace accidents are about 90% male, and that murder victims are about 77% male strongly support the thesis."
The thesis, as explained in your response claiming that I'm misunderstanding you, is
"when men are victims of high profile crimes, there never appear op-eds pointing out that their behavior was risky, even when it was".
Joining the army and going off to war is not a crime. The men that were killed in Iraq and Vietnam were not killed because they were men. They were killed because they were soldiers.
Workplace accidents are not crimes.
I do feel some sympathy with you over the draft in Vietnam, because I think the draft was morally wrong. However, the draft was not ILLEGAL. Wrong, but not illegal. And that means those men were not the "victims of high-profile crime".
I stand by my claim that three of your examples are not relevant to your thesis.