Good Candidates

Certainly every candidate has a downside, but the informed voter doesn't want to hear about rumor or past history that doesn't relate to how a candidate or incumbent will perform a job.

The ideal leader tells us how he will take us into the future. A candidate with positive ideas and clearly intelligent aspirations for bettering the community as a whole is the ideal hopeful.

In this past primary, two races tested this theory. The Hattery-Byron and Clinton-Tsongas races show that negative ad campaigns don't really work.

Justin M. Mascari

Monkton

School Nurses

I disagree with the position of The Sun that in order to ameliorate Baltimore County's financial problems, vital nursing services should be denied children in Baltimore county non-public schools. We in non-public schools recognize the urgency of the county's financial situation, yet we object, on moral and ethical grounds, to an attempt to balance the budget by jeopardizing the health and safety of children.

In addition, we resist efforts to penalize non-public school parents further. As tax-paying citizens, they already pay for the nursing service as well as support the public schools with their tax dollars.

Non-public schools in Baltimore County make a significant financial contribution to the county. Catholic schools alone save the county approximately $40 million yearly by educating 8,000 of its citizens.

Should only 1 percent of students from Catholic schools transfer into the public system, the savings anticipated by cutting nursing services to non-public schools would be lost. Such a transfer is likely if tuition costs have to rise due to non-public schools absorbing this additional cost.

In closing, the non-public schools, as all other constituencies in Baltimore County, will continue contributing generously to assure government solvency. However, doing so at the expense of children is not acceptable to us either now or in the future.

Lawrence S. Callahan

Baltimore

The writer is superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

No more

Come November, given the choice of Bill Clinton or George Bush, I will vote for neither.

My primary ballot went to Paul Tsongas, and for the first time in over 20 years I felt enthusiastic about an election.

For too many recent elections I have voted for the guy I disliked the least. Well, no more. I now know there is someone better out there, and until the power brokers decide to provide me the opportunity to help elect one I'll hang on to my vote.

This is coming from someone who has never missed a presidential election. I don't think I am alone. Would someone care to count us?

Ann Nolan

Cambridge

What a System

Daniel S. Greenberg's March 17 article, "Paperwork Costs: A Hidden Boom in Medical Bills," is certainly provocative. It is unlikely that any private physician in the United States would disagree with the premise that medical billing is chaotic, confusing, time consuming and overly expensive to everyone.

However, Mr. Greenberg proceeds from there to an indirect recommendation for a National Health Service similar to the Canadian system. Unfortunately, this simplistic reasoning has omitted a large number of variables about the Canadian Health System, many of which are very disturbing.

In addition, he omits that by far the most confusing billing system ever foisted on American physicians is the new Medicare billing system. It has caused an almost unbelievable maelstrom in the medical community. I find it hard to believe that a system that runs Medicare could possibly run the entire health care system.

Daniel P. Harley, M.D.

Baltimore

House 'Antics

I am outraged that I find myself in the role of an apologist for the actions of our House of Representatives. I teach high school sophomores United States government. My goal is to give them pride in our unique form of government and help to make them proud that they are Americans. Then we discuss the antics of the House of Representatives.

Our text teaches that an essential element of our representative government is that the representatives must be accountable to the people for their actions. What can be further from the truth?

The House leadership and many of its members show contempt for American citizens when they try to cover up the House banking scandal by refusing to make public the names of hundreds of its members who may have unethically taken

advantage of one of the special "perks" not available to ordinary citizens. They flaunt their authority by exempting themselves from laws binding to ordinary citizens. Who do these public servants of the people think they are?

In the United States, our government rests upon the concept of popular sovereignty. Government acts only with the consent of the governed. I'm not so sure we consent to their arrogant behavior. How many House members would be willing to face my classes and justify that body's corruption? I can't.

Maybe it's true that we get the government we deserve. I tell my students that. I want them to love our form of government. I want them to participate in the political process -- to vote, even to run for political offices. But when they look at our Congress, what must they think?

Alfred L. Peterson

Bel Air

Bad Bill

Your March 12 editorial, "Protecting Maryland Distributors," proves to me that you never let the facts interfere with your editorial policy. The bill did nothing to protect small mom and pop distributors.

It did quite the opposite -- preventing them from landing distributorships, which are controlled by the big operators (who, in many cases, have forgotten how to take care of their customers). This bill was introduced for the benefit of two politically well-connected individuals by the same state agency which, for the last several years, has vigorously opposed similar legislation.

The most disappointing aspect of all is that The Sun would lower its standards and embrace something which has no merit but has all the right connections.

William A. Clark

Darlington

The writer is vice president of Clark Sales and Service Inc.

Myths, Deities and Civilizations

This letter is in response to your article, "A Funny, Blasphemous, 'Lysistrata' " by Garland L. Thompson (March 14). The article has misrepresented some facts, omitted others and, perhaps due to limited space, has made some illogical conclusions.

The article states that Ms. Dunlap, the Morgan State theater teacher, asks her class about the origin of theatre and responds with "taking the class on an excursion through the African origins of some ancient Greece's mythology." What the article does not provide is the answer to Ms. Dunlap's question. Nearly every culture has some form of theater, but a formalized theater, in which a structure is used for the presentation, did not exist in Egypt (or Africa if you prefer); it did flourish in Greece.

Myths and deities have common traits among many ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians and the Sumerians, a much older civilization. This fact does not allow misleading parallels between the Egyptian/African(?) and Greek pantheon such as the "goddess of chastity, Artemis, was an African woman, and the Greek goddess of wisdom was (Athena) an African princess." Having visited major museums in the U.S. and Europe, we have not come across any "homage" to sub-Saharan African woman in Greek art, if this is what Ms. Dunlap's comment means. Unless it is a Eurocentrist "conspiracy"!

The article than makes reference to "the new-age crowd defending the 19th century notion that Africans contributed little to modern culture." Admittedly not well-versed on "new age philosophy," we were unaware this is one of their tenets, and are certain their beliefs range from the probable to the absurd, as do the Afrocentrists'.

In the performance of the play, as Mr. Thompson explains, Ms. Dunlap explores the "strong ties between Old Hellas and Africa's cultural centers." Which parts of Africa is Ms. Dunlap exploring? If it is sub-Saharan Africa, as the description of the performance leads us to believe, who in sub-Saharan Africa were the contemporaries of Old Hellas's culture centers?

The article goes on to say, "Old Aristophanes, who knew the connections between the intellectual leaders of his society and the African scholars at Timbuktu and other centers, probably wouldn't have been disturbed." "Old" Aristophanes would certainly have been "old," and most likely senile, because Timbuktu was not founded until the 11th century A.D.

The use of the adjective "old" to describe Hellas and Aristopohanes implies that the classical interpretation of Greece's historical role is outdated. "The neoclassic scholars trying to drown out the questions raised by persistent dissenters like Professor Asante assuredly would be upset." And justifiably so! The re-writing of history to correct perceived bias is not achieved by using half-truths, misrepresentations and exploitation of the reader's ignorance of history.

Dementra Voyadgis

Eric Bernard

Washington

Pro-Choice

Your March 5 editorial on the senatorial race contains a dangerous and misleading misuse of language in itsdescription of Sen.Barbara Mikulski as "pro-abortion."The correct description would be to say that she favors abortion rights, or is pro-choice. To be pro-choice is not to advocate abortion, as your editorial implies. Rather,it is to beleive that the diffcult,painful decision of whether to carry a pregnancy to term is best left to the women who face this dilemma, and that government has no business interfering at all.

Bonnie Rachel Hurwitz

Baltimore