Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 94 Editor's Choice: 19
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it's good to see...
[Read the article: Disaster belief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...that the eternal pastime of old people beating up on young people, which has literally been going on since ancient Greece at least, hasn't fallen out of fashion.
Some points:
*Of course the older fellow in Keillor's office tale is more worried about his career than the callow youths in the cubes. He almost certainly has more economic responsiblities (kids, looming retirement) and higher expectations about his living environment (i.e. he probably wouldn't be blase about crashing on a buddy's couch or eating ramen if that job falls through).
*He probably also has a sense of responsibility to his employers inherited from the days when employers actually cared about their employers. The kids know instinctively that anyone who expects that their employment with Northern Grommets is anything other than an economic transaction -- one in which Northern Grommets holds an upper hand -- is a sucker. They are not treated with respect by their bosses, so why should they treat their bosses with respect?
*Keillor notes his father's instinctive sold conservatism. Of course, Keillor didn't know his father when his father was the age of those Gen Y twerps in the cubes. Maybe his dad wanted to have a wacky career in, say, public radio or something, but decided that hard work was the way to go when little Garrison needed feeding and care.
But thanks for suggesting that everyone should abandon any aspirations of creativity in lieu of good hard work at the age of 18. A quick glance at Keillor's Wikipedia bio indicates that he got his start in radio at the age of 27 and sold his first story to the New Yorker at the age 28. I'm assuming he did something for money during his 20s. Thank God his creative career sprung forth magically in 1969; I'd hate to thing he might have been nursing dreams while working at that job.
Sorry, I don't usually get into writerly psychoanalysis, and I usually like Keillor's columns, but this one left a really bad taste in my mouth.
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i'm always amazed...
[Read the article: The Mormons are coming]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...at the hostility Mormon theology and practice gets from people who somehow don't have the same reaction about other practices that, if you strip away the centuries of encrusted ritual, are just as weird. For instance, did you know that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers perform an act of ritual simulated cannibalism every week, because they believe that eating the flesh and drinking the blood of their saviour brings them special holiness? And that they often mime the shape of an ancient torture implment over their bodies? It's true! Somehow I imagine that the "throat-cutting" that goes on in Mormom worship is treated with something of the same ritual and emotional distance.
Was Joseph Smith a fraud? There are three possibilities for every person who ever claimed to be a prophet: they could be a con artist, or a lunatic, or the real deal. The fact that Smith lived in a world much more recognizable to us than, say, Muhammed or Jesus did doesn't necessarily make option A more likey for him than it was for them.
I'm not a Mormon or anything else, religion-wise, and I'm quite aware of all the ways that Mormon teaching clashes with my own beliefs. I'm just always amused by people who are so adament that "this mumbo-jumbo is harmful and bad, but that mumbo-jumbo is totally normal and reasonable."
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What about trains?
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Patrick, you never mention them, but I do wonder if it's realistic to think that train travel could be part of the solution in the northeast -- the most congested air corridor and the only one that has halfway decent train service in North America. There are even rail stations at EWR and BWI that would allow rail-to-train transfers. How much would more investment in Amtrak (both in increasing NE corridor capacity and in subsidizing fares) take pressure off the system?
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not pertaining to the main problem but...
[Read the article: Judge: 10-year-old "probably agreed" to sex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is a great deal of fraught history when it comes to taking Aboriginal children out of Aboriginal settlements and into white households -- it was basically Australian government policy for much of the 20th century, now widely seen as an attempt at a sort of soft genocide against the Aborgines. See Wikipedia's Stolen Generation article for more info.
One thing I've seen noted in other articles about this case is that the perpetrators were part of high-status families within local Aboriginal society, whereas the girl was from a low-status family. I wonder how much the judge was trying to defer to local power structures.
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flights to Poland
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Polish LOT is in the Star Alliance and I believe it code-shares with United and US Airways. I imagine that absorbs most of the not-all-that-hight traffic between the two countries...
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hmm
[Read the article: Eeuw! of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Fortunately -- just in time for puberty to be arriving earlier and earlier -- all that tween-sexualizing, virginity-fetishizing grossness has changed. Oh, wait.
Or maybe it's a sign that it isn't the recent phenomenon that so many moral panickers would have you believe it is?
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I just want to give a big hand...
[Read the article: Ask Pablo]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...to the letter writer for using the word "pop". Regional dialect speakers, represent!