Letters to the Editor
Sierrasong
Published Letters: 7
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About Right...
[Read the article: If the shoes look right, you must indict]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for a moment of levity in an increasingly bizarre scenario! Made my lunchtime.
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The Bottom Line
[Read the article: Oprah's revenge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What is the bottom line of this dust-up between James Frey, Oprah and the public at large? That lying has consequences. "Truth" has, in recent years, taken a hit as a virtue that one needs in their arsenal of ethics. Witness the fact that the "buzzword" of the year was "truthiness" - we just don't seem to have much regard for the act of telling the truth anymore. If we can lie and get away with it, it must, therefore, be truth.
I'm a middle school teacher. I hear lies all day long. Sadly, the culture of "I'll-lie-until-I-get-caught" has trickled down to the younger set - those who ape the behavoir of their elders. I for one, am glad to see this issue raised: that truth DOES matter and not just if you get caught lying!
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Walking the talk...
[Read the article: McCain's Falwell flip-flop]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We have all known people like this -- they say the right things, they seem very focused and behave like mavericks; in short they "talk the talk." But, poke around a bit and you find they don't always " walk the talk."
I'm a liberal, no doubt about it. In the past, before I knew much of McCain's history, I had some respect for the man. He seemed to be a man who would buck the Republican status quo and make a stand where it counted. But, alas, he seems to be all flash and dazzle with little substance. As mentioned by another commenter, my respect really vanished when I read in some depth about how he was treated by Bush, Rove and Co. It really turned my stomach to see him pander to them at every opportunity thereafter. I mean, how could you stand yourself if you were to swallow that sort of treatment? A whisper campaign about an out-of-wedlock child? Your wife depicted as a junkie? And on and on...
If the man has so little respect for himself that he's willing to pander to Bush, Rove, Falwell (don't even get me started on him!!), how can we expect him to have respect for the citizens of the country he wants to lead?
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Ultimate irony
[Read the article: India's girl shortage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think perhaps we're missing the ultimate irony here. Here we have an Indian society (like others in the world) which values "sons" so much that it sabotages those very sons by aborting their prospective brides. Hello? What part of this do they not GET? What good is a precious male child if there is no one for him to marry and, ostensibly, produce more male children (who would also have no wives)?
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It's not about Marin, people...
[Read the article: My son, the stranger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ah, Marin. I grew up there during the "peacock-feather-and hot-tub-era", moved away some 28 years ago and lo and behold I find that the county's denizens are still being branded as "navel-gazers." Some things never change.
I, too, am the divorced mother of a nearly 17 year old son who has undergone a transformation that renders him nearly unrecognizable. Where is the boy that I used to dance with in the grocery store? The one who simply had to buy the cheaply made trinket from the shoeless Mexican boy because he just knew his family needed the money? Who once told me, after helping to cook Thanksgiving dinner, that he was going to tell his wife to just put her feet up at the end of the day - he'd cook because he knew how hard she had worked that day.
Apparently THAT boy has gone into hiding; I know just how you feel, Anne. Mother's Day came and went. I would have been happy with "Thanks, Mom" scrawled on a dinner napkin. The bad grades, the spaghetti sauce all over the kitchen, the studied indifference (actually, barely concealed contempt) to pleas from his mother...adolescence is hell, isn't it? But, shining out through the cracks of his sullen cocoon, I occasionally see flashes of the man he will be and I'm reassured. Temporarily.
But for now? Well, all I can say is they don't call a cocoon a pupa for nothing...
Drop me an email, Anne. We can swap adolescent boy and Marin stories while the boys wash the cars.