Letters to the Editor
porsadgai
Published Letters: 36 Editor's Choice: 4
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Impossibility
[Read the article: Sex, drugs and a federal government small enough to drown in a bathtub]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Greatest Conservative Rock Songs" is the mother of all oxymorons.
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Over Gold
[Read the article: It's a man's world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anybody who finds it necessary to dangle a gold chain around his neck for his publicity photos can hardly then describe himself as "manly". Only girlie men need jewelry.
What a joke.
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Musical cure for insomnia
[Read the article: Download. Listen. Vote! Song Search begins!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thorazine.... perfect. I was thinking heroin. Are these two audio sleeping pills actually the best songs out of 500? If so, I offer my sincere condolences to the judges. It's not that they're so bad... it's more that they're just so nothing.
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Deadbeats, gold diggers, and spousal roles
[Read the article: Does less of a paycheck make him less of a man?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I see comments that include characterizations of un or under employed men in relationships as "deadbeats". Do these letter writers believe that women in relationships where they are the un or underemployed partner to be "golddiggers" or some other gender specific derogitory term?
As a baby boomer who was a stay at home dad with a working wife in 1970, I have always thought that feminism's push for gender equality was a win-win... a no-brainer. If women had more options then it just followed that men, too could enjoy more options. I was a good parent, and did have an artist's income (ha ha ha) to contribute to the relationship.
But, that's the way it works in my estimation. If you're in a long term relationship, and in particular with children, then it isn't about "your money/my money". It's about "our money". Otherwise you don't have a relationship. You have a business arrangement.
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Fundamentalism and Vegitarians
[Read the article: Diary of a turkey killer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was part of the great hippy back-to-the-land movement of the Whole Earth Cataloge, Foxfire days in the early 70s. As part of that, I learned small stock animal husbandry from my wonderfully grounded, Mexican immigrant Grandfather in law. This led to a flock of Cornish Cross chicks, destined for the fry pan.
Half way though the butchering process I decided I liked eggs better than fried chicken, which led to a decade as a vegetarian, more or less.
What finally drove me away from the varying degrees of vegetarianism was the fundamentalist mind set of so many who follow that path. (Well.. that and the fact that so many "vegetarians" are really horrible cooks.) This attitude rings out clearly in many of the letters denouncing this essay.
Living on a small farm, on the subsistence income of a musician, has changed me into what I'd like to think is a pragmatist. I love my garden vegetables, I love my goats, I love my chickens, but everything has a time and a purpose. Domesticated animals would not even exist if it wasn't for their utility - both living (eggs, meat, weed & pest control) and after their death (meat).
We don't all have to adhere to an urban dwelling vegan fundamentalist's world view, and, I submit, the world would be an awfully dour, bleak place should we all follow that path. Does this make me a callous killer of my "pets", or merely a person who has found a certain peace in taking responsibility for the animals that die so that I may live? I would submit that it's the latter.
Nobody... not even you rabid, fundamentalist vegans, go through life without accumulating some debt to the other living things that surround you. To denounce those who don't adhere to whatever artificially strict standards you may or may not actually impose on yourselves is to make yourselves cartoon character ready parodies of your supposely high, holy lifestyles. And that, plainly, is fundamentalism. We have enough of that already, thank you.
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every problem has a solution
[Read the article: "I Yam What I Yam!"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't like ads? Subscribe and pay for your ad free reading.
Don't like imaginary boogiemen of the "false left"? Limit your reading to FreeRepublic.com where you'll feel much safer among your kind.
See how easy that is?
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Bush regime out now!
[Read the article: No time to heal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why there aren't millions of us encamped around the White House with torches and pitchforks is a mystery. Soon? This nation can't take another two years of this insane treason.
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No more gates
[Read the article: Who's to blame for James Kim's death?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have lived in the Northern Oregon coast range my entire 57 years. For many of those years the logging roads were open to exploration. Only in recent decades have these roads been gated. Far too many of them are now, blocking access to thousands of previously open semi wilderness experiences. Please do not advocate gating and locking away any more of these areas in order to appease those who seem to believe that every single human experience should be safe and foolproof. That's a goal than no amount of misguided control is going to assure anyway.
The more we limit access to wild experience to people; the more we strive to control our entire experience and make it safe, the more we're insulating and removing people from the experience of real nature. If enough people don't experience nature and wild beauty then it becomes easier to write off these areas as "unused" and abandon them to commercial interests. Only by the force of a large pool of people who have experienced and value wild areas and experiences can we save some small semblence of this world from those who constantly seek to exploit it for short term gain.
I'm sorry that the Kim's horrible string of incredibly bad decisions led to James' death. I would be far sorrier and it would be infinitely more tragic if his death led to fewer people having the chance to experience the wild areas of our country on their own terms and with their own skills.