Letters to the Editor
uptoolate
Published Letters: 95 Editor's Choice: 2
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WALKING is not a four-letter word ...
[Read the article: Bored? Lonely? Take a walk]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... though it seems that Americans outside of NYC and SF think it is.
I loved reading the essay, because I would love to be able to afford to live where large numbers of people actually walk to get from one place to another.
I am very fortunate to live in a town that has made a huge effort to create mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. But there is a vast difference between "walkable" and "walked". It's depressing in the extreme to visit said neighborhoods and find almost no one on the streets but folks who live outside those neighborhoods who have driven in to visit a chic restaurant and stroll a half-block after dinner for a coffee somewhere else.
Want to see the locals? Hang out in the well-placed alleys behind the $700K condos and watch them cruise by in their SUVs, closing the garage doors behind them.
It's no wonder that the neighborhood natural-foods megastore has massive underground parking. If they depended on the locals to walk to do their marketing, they'd go broke tomorrow.
Forgive what seems like whining, but I am amazed at how seldom this subject is addressed in the public realm. Not long ago Slate published a photo essay on the 25th anniversary of a town in Florida (Seaside, was it?) that was deliberately build as a New Urbanist community, mixed-use, lots of sidewalks, great care given to designing for a pedestrian environment.
Only one problem: in the roughly one dozen photos shown, there was not a single pedestrian. And not a single comment, as far as I could tell, either in the captions or in followup letters (save mine) pointing out this striking contradiction.
Is there anywhere on the Web where this subject is discussed? James Howard Kunstler has an interesting Web site, but I find no forum or discussion section there. Any ideas?
[P.S. Good grief, is the new Letters format going to publish this without paragraph breaks? That's what the Preview looks like. Note to Editor: Help! What happened to the nice, wide, easy-to-read format that worked so well for so long?]
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Enough of this Idiotic Euphemism!
[Read the article: Good news in the fight against teenage abuse]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What the hell is an "abusive relationship"?
Does a relationship swing a fist? Fire a gun? Plunge a dagger? Land a kick?
I recall back to the horrid O.J. thing when that ridiculous term was bandied about. Gee, if it was the relationship that was abusive, maybe it should have been put on trial for butchering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The outcome couldn't have been any worse.
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GeeJay nailed it ...
[Read the article: What you missed while watching "Dancing With the Stars"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When he/she said:
"One historical note to keep in mind when watching these debates: Eight years ago I watched in dismay as one political hopeful’s outwardly sophomoric, ignorant, condescending, idiotic, smirking, donkey-laughing, and non-replies to questions propelled him to the Party’s candidacy."
To which I would add:
Whoever becomes the GOP presidential nominee, it matters not where he stands on Iraq, abortion, gay marriage, taxes, healthcare, education, the environment, global warming, the “war on terror,” torture, habeus corpus, or globalization. It matters not whether he’s a flip-flopper, wife-cheater, cross-dresser, believer in evolution, non-believer in evolution, strict constructionist, loose constructionist, etc. etc. etc. It matters not whether his opponent is HRC, Obama, John Edwards, or Jesus H. Christ.
It matters only that the GOP propaganda machine successfully package him as a “leader” ... and if they could do it with GWB (twice!), they can do it with anyone.
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Maybe they should be wearing bobby sox
[Read the article: "Knocked Up"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Neither Ben nor Alison is ready to become a parent .... But for reasons that aren't, and don't need to be, spelled out, Alison decides to go ahead with the pregnancy."
Let’s see ... America, 2007, two people who are anything but ready to become parents, for unexplained reasons decide to become parents anyway. Riiiiiiight.
For decades, popular entertainment has refused to acknowledge that something like 1 in 4 pregnancies in this country ends in abortion. Movies and TV dish out lots of unplanned pregnancies, but almost never does the heroine choose to terminate one of them (and even then, not without some form of punishment).
Apparently, however, even that little fantasy is no longer enough. In our 21st-century version of the Hayes Code, today’s heroines are forbidden not only from having an abortion, but from even considering one.
I guess that’s why the reasons for this nonsensical plot development “don’t need to be spelled out.”
P.S. To Peter Joshua, your point is well taken: of course, choosing to become a parent is complex, personal, and arational. I’ve been there. But for a popular American movie in the year 2007 to pretend that it is not a choice but an imperative, that two people faced with an unplanned pregnancy and unready for parenthood do not even consider the option of abortion ... that is absurd.
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Interesting discussion
[Read the article: Unstable starlets and little-girl voices]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am a woman in my mid-50s who works as a professional from home, interacting with clients via email and the phone.
Most of my clients are 20-25 years younger than I. Listening occasionally to taped interviews, I am struck at how deep my voice sounds as compared with theirs.
How ironic it is. When I was young, and concerned about sex discrimination, I would deliberately lower the pitch of my voice, especially when interacting with men. It was easy to do.
But now that I am older, and concerned about age discrimination, I try to raise the pitch of my voice, especially when interacting with young women. It is hard to do; still, I try.
I draw the line, however, at deliberately inserting the word "like" (or, even more cringe-inducing, "I'm like") into every other phrase. It would probably be more effective than anything else at making me appear younger, but my pride just won't let me :)