Letters to the Editor
-Emily
Published Letters: 284 Editor's Choice: 6
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this works?
[Read the article: Salon's new letters registration policy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]sweet.
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Sorry David.
[Read the article: Salon's new letters registration policy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I too get the impression you're a few tacos short of a combo plate.
But by all means, keep posting!
Let freedom ring
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Keep the anonymous option!
[Read the article: Salon's new letters registration policy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It harms no one, save offending the sensibilities of the nosy.
The internet is the last safe refuge for benign identity play and healthy schizophrenia.
People "try things on" on the internet, and everyone should know that this is happening.
And since no one here is pretending to be 14 in order to shtup someone inappropriate, who is harmed by reading a post by an unidentified person?
If it makes you feel betrayed to think that the gal you chat with as "Susie66" might be saying catty things to you or espousing another viewpoint as "Anonymous" well...that's the price we pay for socializing on the internet.
Real life friends sometimes have secret lives too, and it's not Salon's job to act in loco parentis.
The anonymous option is beneficial because if this is truly a home for ideas, then ideas should occasionally be allowed to stand alone.
And people from time immemorial have tried out their "true" selves in secret while gathering the courage to "come out" to their communities.
Why should we disuade them here? It harms the cause of human authenticity rather than promoting it.
And if someone uses the "anonymous" option for cowardly sniping, well...screw 'em.
Trolls are like houseplants: they die from neglect.
Let's not cut off our collective nose to spite our face: keep anonymity.
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*sigh*
[Read the article: Classical music falls on deaf ears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I lived in New York and rode the subways daily, I frequently found the mentally ill sitting beside me.
They'd cross cars to get to me; I had not yet mastered the "head-in-your-Post, don't-make-eye-contact" thing (this was in the era before iPods.)
I also just think everyone deserves to be listened to...and they could smell that.
Speaking of smell, these people were often filthy and I'd wager even more often contagious in the wintertime.
But I couldn't ignore them...I just can't ignore people.
Am I a good person for trying to listen to them?
To help them be seen?
Am I a delicate flower who sees the beauty in all god's children?
Hell no.
Because it broke me: I'd come home every night to my tiny walk-up in the Bronx and fall into my boyfriend's arms, weeping.
I couldn't handle it.
I no longer live in New York.
In Seattle, I delivered pizzas out of a restaurant in the heart of the gutterpunk district.
In the summer, they lined the walls, "baa'ing" at me and calling me "sheep" if I didn't give them any of my tip money when I came back from a run. One time I snapped and told them that if I was a sheep, they were fleas living off a sheep, and they should STFU.
I no longer live in Seattle.
No matter where I live, life is full of constant stimulus.
In big cities, images and sounds fight for your attention every second you're in public.
People and their yearnings and their gifts and their art and their sorrow are all up in your face, all day long.
Everything wants something from you, and if you want to give to everyone who asks it's easy to eventually give away your sanity.
I could easily miss the beauty of ANY moment under urban circumstances...it doesn't have to be as obvious as Joshua Bell.
It could be the kid eating a booger, or the light bouncing off the windows when we go through a tunnel, or an old couple kissing.
Everyone misses most of what's going on around them.
We only have one pair of eyes, one nose, one set of ears apiece.
We're all Philistines one moment, congnoscente the next.
So cut us some slack, man.
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I bet...
[Read the article: Classical music falls on deaf ears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...if Margaret Leng Tan were on the subway platform performing John Cage on a prepared piano, I'd notice.
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please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
[Read the article: New Yorker: Women largely irrelevant in near future]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The first time I read Nicole Krauss was in The New Yorker.
I fell in love with Janet Malcolm & Claudia Roth-Pierpont by reading the New Yorker.
They published Lillian Hellman, the correspondence of Mary McCarthy & Hannah Arendt...I've been exposed to incredible female minds and gone off to read more about them or from them, all because I've read The New Yorker since I was a little girl.
I appreciated this week's review of the "Global Feminisms" art show, and didn't once feel insulted that it was written by a man. I also enjoy Malcom Gladwell, Adam Gopnik, John Lahr, etc.
Personally, I don't give a damn about their numbers: I think claiming that "The New Yorker" is somehow "a guy thing" represents a huge set back for women.
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ah
[Read the article: Porn in theory, porn in practice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"In the lizard mind where all things are writ backward on the mirror in God's pink lipstick, I am you and you are me."
Mr. Tennis, I do so appreciating your writing.
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another vote for Camille
[Read the article: Real inconvenient truths]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Damn she makes me nuts sometimes, but her columns and their attendant intellectual blood-baths are truly the most "salon-like" aspect of Salon.com.
Keep 'em coming!
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to the letter writer -
[Read the article: Porn in theory, porn in practice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you read this forum, please remember:
Anytime you see someone say "porn is good" or
"porn is bad" or
"porn is (x)" or
"porn isn't (y)" or
"you should (z)" or
"here are the rules..."
remember, we know nothing about you or your life, and you know nothing about us.
we could be writing to you from mental hospitals: our wisdom is suspect, regardless of the force with which it is delivered.
The same is true of Cary, I suppose, but he's the only one whose opinion you actually solicited.
So don't let all of this confuse you more.
Best of luck...