Letters to the Editor
Vickiesq
Published Letters: 36 Editor's Choice: 3
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Mired and Lippy
[Read the article: The president speaks, then leaves]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know you've been getting a lot of grief about the new design and the broad sheet. But I, as well many others I'm sure, have appreciated your moment-to-moment coverage of the news from Washington this week.
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Behind the curtain
[Read the article: The president takes questions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reading this, I realized I very much yearn to have a president who answers questions and who displays something human behind the politically-crafted image. But it's still no comfort to hear again the inapt analogy to the American revolution which was hundreds of years in the making and deeply organic in its origins. And, of course, there is also the unhappy example of the French revolution that quickly descended into deep anarchy and muddled along for decades before achieving any kind of stable government. Maybe that's what's unfolding in Iraq.
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Frantically tedious
[Read the article: Pride and pathetic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Like the recent remake of "Romeo and Juliet" this version of "P & P" began with too much rushing around, crowded speeches, and a generally frenetic air that quite exhausted one. Leaving the theater, I felt like I had seen a condensed version of the book, rather like a 60-minute Shaespeare, which gave little attention to the nuances of class and property. Perhaps we cannot ask more of a two-hour commercial movie. But even "Bride and Prejudice," although it took more liberties with the text was more faithful to the spirit of Miss Austen (not Austin, that's her Texas cousin, or the anachronistic "Ms. Austen.) A week after seeing it I can't recall a single memorable scene or bit of dialogue. And that is a terrible shame.
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Women Should Grow Up
[Read the article: At home with David Brooks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I just read the Hirschmann article that apparently spawned these exchanges. At first I worried that I've made the compromises she criticizes. I attended Boalt Hall law school and now I work as a full time lawyer with one child in school. But it's a government job so I'm not making the big money some of my former classmates pull down. I do, however, have some impact on social policies, etc. And my income puts me in the upper 5% of female wage earners, even without considering my husband's income. So maybe Hirschman will accept that I have not become a mover and a shaker but I'm still fulfilling my promise.
And the truth is, I generally like working, getting dressed, going to my tidy, organized office, talking to adults, occasionally grappling with intellectual issues. My son seems just fine. He likes school, likes afterschool care, performs well academically and socially.
I review my personal history and realize the women in my family have always worked, partly because they could not rely on absent men. I have a photograph of my great-great grandmother graduating from a teacher's college in 1886. I know she and her daughter helped operate the family hotels for years. Both my grandmothers, who were divorced from their childrens' fathers, had jobs from the 1930s on. My mother went back to school and work when her youngest child started kindergarten. I worked during my pregnancy and my son's infancy because his father, my first husband, would not.
I look at my sister-in-law, about to be divorced by my brother and lacking education and skills, and I wonder how she could possibly have gambled on his lifelong support and protection. Women need to take care of themselves. It is the fundamental responsibility of being an adult.
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No suprises
[Read the article: You don't know Jack?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I switch to Jack when I get bored with NPR (especially during this long siege of Supreme Court confirmations) but it makes me nostalgic for the days when you could hear something that surprised and delighted you on the radio. In the halcyon '80s, I lived in Berkeley and still remember the shock and awe of first hearing KALX broadcasting "Brass in Pocket" and heading immediately down to Telegraph to buy it forthwith. The problem with IPOD and its ilk is you have to find the music to download it. No anonymous broadcaster on Jack or elsewhere ever turns you on something edgy or unexpected, which is why the metaphor of random sex is only partly apt.
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Danger at sea
[Read the article: Bush threatens veto -- his first -- over port deal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This deal points to the many problems existing with the management of the ports. My husband works on container ships and I have often visited the ports of Los Angeles and Oakland. The security measures are modest, almost lackadaisical. The general operations seem highly vulnerable. The companies that operate the ports need to be subject to closer scrutiny and regulation than has been indicated so far by Chertoff's generic reassurances without specifics. It is no comfort to this sailor's wife that the Bush administration would object so strongly to questions about the terrorist connections exhibited by Dubai.