It's Parents' Job

Let me respond to the article April 12 on the "graying" of the Baltimore Symphony. Children will value what their parents value. If classical music is played in the home, children will love and appreciate it. They don't know they're not supposed to.

This is the responsibility of parents, not schools or the symphony. Perhaps "baby boomers" are turned off because their parents never turned them on to the beauty of classical music. While I'd encourage the symphony to offer half-price tickets for children to encourage families attending concerts, the symphony doesn't need gimmicks. Let the music stand on its own merit as it has for centuries.

Linda Donovan

Middletown

Don't Count Old Otterbein Church Out Yet

In The Sun article of April 20, the Rev. Douglas Fox reported that he is closing down the coffee house at Old Otterbein United Methodist Church because the noise, traffic and parking problems caused by Oriole Park at Camden Yards will make it difficult for coffee-house patrons to attend.

Edward Cline, deputy director of the Maryland Stadium Authority, was quoted as saying he could not understand "why the church would throw in the towel so early in the season." Old Otterbein United Methodist Church does not intend to throw in the towel at any time.

It should be understood that the coffee house is hosted at the church as a separate entity, at the request of and under the direct supervision of Mr. Fox. Although the church fully supports the aims of that ministry, it has no administrative authority over its policies and programs; nor does it receive any renumeration from the coffee house, except for a negotiated fee to cover a portion of building use and utilities. When Mr. Fox requested a change in assignment to another church, it was generally assumed that he would take the coffee house with him, although no discussions centered on this issue.

In response to Mr. Cline's comments, Old Otterbein United Methodist Church has indeed changed some of its scheduled activities to accommodate the Orioles' schedule. In addition, within a year, the church will need to face the further disruption of torn-up streets and the bulldozing of a portion of its church grounds to make way for the expansion of its neighbor, the Convention Center.

Old Otterbein is proud of its continuous ministry in this city for more than 200 years, and it is proud to accept the growing pains of a growing Baltimore. We intend to continue this dynamic ministry at Sharp and Conway Streets for the next 200 years.

Joseph S. Culotta

Baltimore

The writer is lay leader at Old Otterbein United Methodist Church.

Garland Thompson's April 18 column points out judges' inability to meet the needs of children regardless of the gender of the parent. Fathers' ability and desire to actively participate in their childrens' lives is being squashed by the limitations of legal, religious and educational institutions.

Social and economic conditions resulting in recognition of role changes have not caught up with the typecast role of the father as only a financial supporter for women and children.

New traditions need to be assimilated by us to welcome and recognize the value males have to give and receive by direct care for their offspring. It is long overdue for us to discard sexual territories in order to meet the basic and boundless needs of our children.

Robert L. Schwartz

Towson

No Magic

When I worked downtown I routinely went to the Enoch Pratt Central 1ibrary to borrow such items as the libretto to whatever opera was in town. I no longer work downtown but naively thought that surely the Baltimore County library would have the same.

My wife requested the libretto to "The Magic Flute" at the Towson library and was told the Baltimore County system doesn't carry it.

When she asked the librarian (who was not busy) to call the Pratt Library, my wife was invited to use a pay phone to call to see if the Pratt carried it. She would have to make the request herself.

It was left unclear whether the county library would deign to send a notification when it arrived or if we would have to check periodically to see if it had come in. The Pratt librarians were always more than helpful and cooperative when I had a question.

It doesn't seem too much to ask that the main library of a system have some serious fare.

Oh well, at least I know where to go for the Harlequin romance!

Peter Brownrigg

Towson

Chamber Meeting

Contrary to the opinion of your April 22 editorial, something did happen at the first public forum to discuss the potential reactivation of a Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce.

The unanimous positive response of those attending affirmed the validity of continuing the dialogue and beginning actual implementation of such an entity which will truly be representative and inclusive of the many and varied businesses existing throughout Baltimore City.

It should be pointed out that many of the persons attending the April 21 meeting came voluntarily. Those who spontaneously attended indeed outnumbered those persons who were specifically invited.

Numbers alone do not determine the success of an idea or a specific meeting. Quality and commitment far outweigh quantity. should also be noted that many of the individuals attending the meeting represented large groups which believe that a Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce should exist and is needed. The Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors alone represents over 350 individual firms and the Market Center Association many merchants in the city.

Comments at the meeting clearly verified the fact that a leadership vacuum does exist in the Baltimore City business community.

It is apparent that the idea of the reactivation of a Baltimore City Chamber of Commerce is a concept whose time has arrived. The steering committee will proceed with this task and the dialogue will continue.

Fletcher R. Hall

Baltimore

The writer is executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors.

Shoddy Journalism about Israel

Wire service reports which appeared about Israel in the April 2 edition of The Sun represented what to careful readers had to appear a blatant manipulation of media, with or without its consent.

After speaking to 49 Arabs, a spokesman for a self-styled Israeli human rights group, which in 1991 received a stipend of $200,000 from the New Israel Fund, pronounced to American correspondents that Israelis have wantonly tortured 5,000 Arab prisoners, an accusation so serious, or so bizarre and so preposterous, that either the group making the ludicrous statement should come forth with the evidence or retract its accusation and issue a public apology.

Israel can not survive with its citizens running around to the foreign press fabricating stories to help raise funds for private agendas.

The article in question was headlined, "Four killed in Gaza as Israelis shoot after firebombing." But in the second paragraph of the Sun report, in an abrupt transition, it was noted that an unidentified -- at least in that graph -- Israeli human rights group accused the government of ". . . letting the police and army routinely torture Palestinian political prisoners."

Nine paragraphs later, in another abrupt transition, the reader was led back to accusations about the human rights group, which, it was said, got its information on the treatment of political prisoners through interviews from this handful of Arabs.

The group was finally identified as the Israel Center for Human Rights, or B'Tselem.

The media, manipulated in this piece, further distorted the disinformation by condensing the report in The Evening Sun under the banner "Torture called routine."

It is shocking that a correspondent would insert the bizarre figure of 5,000 tortured by Israeli soldiers and police, given to him by the spokesman for B'Tselem, especially with data provided by individuals engaged in a never-ending war of words with Israel since 1948.

The spokesman for the so-called "human rights" organization, Stanley Cohen of Hebrew University, in contributing this misinformation, obviously had his own group's political agenda in mind in using the figures as a springboard for what he assumed would score points against the Shamir government.

The media, in taking the word of Mr. Cohen's group, which purportedly took the word of these few Palestinians interviewed, indicted the entire Israeli nation in a single sweeping capricious and bizarre generality. The main victims of this attack, however, were 18- and 19-year olds drafted into the military to serve their country, who stand accused by the Cohen group of committing these fictitious atrocities.

Curiously, the day after this incident was reported, the media at large and The Baltimore Sun specifically acknowledged in guarded terms they had been manipulated by disinformation in an unrelated matter: the accusation that Israel gave Patriot missiles to China. This was a monumental journalistic deviation from truth for which Israel was again made to suffer.

Why must Israel be dragged through the mud continuously by media services prepared to take all comers but Israel at their word?

Harry Cohen

Baltimore