Letters to the Editor
firefly82
Published Letters: 288 Editor's Choice: 30
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Breathe, Carol.
[Read the article: Real! Live! American girls!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Seriously?
I loved Kirsten because I had a love affair with 19th century pioneer life in general when I was about 9--Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman...Little House on the Prairie. Perfect??? They sure are pretty, and their stuff is nifty, I won't deny it...but I sympathized with Kirsten when she felt dumb at school, didn't speak the same language as the other kids (literally in her case, socially in mine), felt like she couldn't get anything right. Have you read the books?
As far as Evil Threats To Our Little Girls go, I rank American Girls low.
Barbie--I performed medical experiments on my Barbies.
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Hillary
[Read the article: How Barack Obama swept to victory in Iowa]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd like for us to have a female president, but I care a whole lot more about always having the right *person* in the job. Hillary's not that person. I'd have been overjoyed to vote for Elizabeth Dole in 2000 and wish she'd stayed in the race (I thought I was a conservative when I was 18--sue me.)
I think olympia's right to a point--a certain, currently large and unfortunately politically active, segment of the population would never elect a female president. But they won't be here forever, at least in those numbers. And are they the people that any liberal or female candidate should be gunning for anyway, rather than the people who currently just don't vote?
Yes, I have an immense and visceral aversion to Hillary--because in her grovelling she's said some of the most sanctimonious, stupid and ignorant things possible about people of my generation. So I don't trust her to lead us or act in our best interests.
For instance, remember "Young people today think 'work' is a four-letter word?" (to the New York Chamber of Commerce in 2006)
I had worked a 20-hour day on the day she said that.
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@ Anonymous 1:13
[Read the article: Womb for rent]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For once, I think I really see things your way. Not as regards the divorce and kids...but the reality of living hand to mouth. I find myself commenting here often on how blinkered and obliviously judgemental people with an excess of money can be.
I'm always 2 weeks' expenses or one emergency away from being on a friend's sofa. I buy whole milk just because it's more fat calories for the same price. I've taken work and put up with bad situations that I never imagined I would, for the pittance of a wage I had no replacement for. Health insurance? Don't make me laugh.
I am very troubled by the attitude of the American woman quoted, as well as the rationalization that American women who become surrogates just "like being pregnant." I don't like the idea of paid surrogacy--the involvement of money in such intimate matters and the control issues it seems to spawn troubles me. But judgement of the Indian women who choose this is a luxury of people who don't know what fear of starvation or utterly impoverished old age is.
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real food
[Read the article: Is there such a thing as too much folic acid?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Seriously, anonymous?
I've got two jobs, and as I've said here before, I don't make very much at all. I eat real food. It's not that hard, it doesn't take that much time, and if you're careful, it can be a good deal more cost effective than eating crap. Eating real food doesn't mandate that you shop at Whole Paycheck. Of course I like organic better, but usually I can only afford my neighborhood corner grocery store.
No, I didn't have the feminine "privilege" of being taught to cook, either. I taught myself. Making soup is just not brain surgery.
And I see Catherine's reaction as symptomatic of what Michael Pollan is calling "nutritionism." But science doesn't know enough yet (or maybe ever) to be able to say that anything is indisputably and always "good" for you, in isolation from the way we evolved to consume and use it and the rest of our diets. And it's a widespread problem, I think, that we're so well-trained to always believe the experts to the extent of subverting our own judgement. Almost nothing is always good for you--enough water, enough sleep, enough exercise, and that's about it.
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If it's truly voluntary, then it's very little like forcibly vaccinating 9-year-old girls
[Read the article: Aboriginal STDs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]'[A]ll individuals within a particular age range would be offered antibiotic treatment without recourse to an individual risk assessment and without waiting for the results of diagnostic testing."'
Actually I think all the difference in the world lies in the word "offered," as opposed to "required." If this is truly an offer of preemptive treatment, and not coercion or force, then ethically, at least, I'm for it.
What I have little idea of is the efficacy and risks of treating an entire, and migratory, human population this way. One possibility that comes to mind is that resistant strains of the bacteria would migrate all the more quickly with their carriers. But given the lifelong risks and quality of life issues posed by untreated STD's, it just might be worth a try.
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This is my first thought all too often concerning Cary's letters...
[Read the article: Help! I'm a prisoner in a big suburban house!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but...how in the world did you not think for a second about the kind of place you actually wanted to live before you bought a house in cupcakeland?
I'm sorry--I know it's not practical because you don't have a time machine--but everyone, really, just think for a few minutes about what you actually want out of life. How you want to live, how you want to behave, what you want to do. And why. And then don't do things that run directly contrary to who you know you are.
The hard part in that is, you have to know who you are, and be honest about what you want, and why. Then you can't be tricked into thinking you want to live in the suburbs.