It’s interesting that this letter gets printed the day of shootings and death at Virginia Tech. But I suppose on most days there is some sort of office siege or parking lot shooting.

I grew up popping tins cans off a fence in rural Connecticut. My grandmother had a bounty out on Blue Jays (noisy, messy birds that chase away the shyer song birds) and although I never got one I had lots of fun trying in the woods outside her rural home. I learned a little gun safety and a little something about nature. My husband’s family is from the south west and I’ve seen his Dad shoot rattlesnakes out from under the house with his rifle – keeping a hand gun in the glove box is almost normal down there.

These days I live in Brooklyn and guns just don’t fit into my life anymore. Guns mean something different where I live – it’s not leafy woods and happy rabbits and old tin cans in Brooklyn. Here is scary and dark and not especially useful in a dangerous situation (and if you say they are you’ve never been mugged). If I really wanted a gun I’d go back out to rural CT or out to Texas and start up a collection – but the life that comes along with gun ownership just isn’t for me right now.

If the LW wants to be a city boy I think he needs to put his love for guns on a shelf for a little bit. They may not mix with the life he’s chosen for himself.

You would really tell a little 8 year old girl she can’t play because of a little head scarf? This isn’t mortal combat or military service these children are walking into – it’s just a friendly competition and one they’ve taken part in before. These kids (all of them) are learning sportsmanship. It’s a game. It’s play time! It’s time to meet other kids and share common interests and show everyone what you’ve got.

Adults determined to following every single rule of a children’s game, no matter how many little girls they make cry or hurt along the way, are very un-cool.

This mom wasn’t at the mall or in a booth at Chili’s. This wasn’t an everyday sort of situation. Mother and child were in the Ronald McDonald house because this little baby had a brain tumor. Rather then walking up 3 flights of steps, or obsessing over a blanket this mom took her sick, fussy baby to her breast right then and there. I think a little extra understanding is called for given the situation.

Not that I think all mom’s shouldn’t be able to nurse whenever the baby is hungry – I would just expect a baby with a brain tumor in the lobby of the Ronald McDonald House to get an extra free pass from this sort of prudish nagging.

I love to travel and move around and explore but there really is no place like NYC. No matter how great my trip has been or how many weeks or years I’ve been gone the best feeling in the world is walking out of a NYC airport to get in line for a taxi – the electricity in the air just grabs you from the start. If you’ve got NYC in your blood nothing else will do.

I had to go to Texas to see NYC with new eyes. The LW had to go to CA. Not to take away from Austin or San Diego but they’re just not NYC.

And there is NO shame in being a native New Yorker: in fact it’s pretty fucking wonderful.

That New Yorkers are rude is a total myth.

http://1010wins.com/pages/48369.php

And our crime rate is just slightly higher then San Diego’s - hardly enough to mention, really.

http://www.theinsider.com/nyc/survive/011crime.htm

It’s about judging and mocking people and when they fail it’s about making them sing through the tears! And that’s why we Americans love it. I’m not saying its right but that’s what the show is about. It’s about peering through your fingers at Sanjaya as he makes eyes at the back-up singers (so gross!). It’s about having to hit the pause button and walk out of the room when Chris Whats-his-Face says, ‘but I meant to sing nasally. It’s the style I was going for!’

To me the ‘good’ singers are the dull ones. Melinda Doolittle? She’s got a lovely voice but if I want to listen to that kind of music I’ll bust out all of the existing artists who did what Melinda is doing better and 50 years before she was born.

I anticipate one of the ‘good’ contestants gets voted off tonight and tomorrow everyone is in an uproar over the injustice. That’s good TV.