Up to Parents
In regard to William S. Liebman's letter of April 26 about home vs. school prayer, I would like to carry his well-addressed argument a few steps further.
Mr. Liebman states that ". . . schools are being asked to perform a role for which they not only are ill-suited, but which properly belongs to the parents." We as parents, teachers and legislators need to substitute the words "sex education," "drug awareness," "values clarification" and "death education" for the word "prayer."
As parents, we need to see our role more clearly and take responsibility for all areas of our child's learning experiences.
Teachers should be allowed to teach the academic "3 Rs" and not be forced to focus on the above areas.
Legislators must begin to realize that just because a few parents abrogate their responsibility as such, it doesn't mean that every parent does so. Encouragement from our leaders is better than laws and mandates for every aspect of life.
Jo Ann Beck
Baltimore
Rail Experience
As coincidence would have it, I took my first light-rail ride on the day before your April 26 feature article on the crime wave aboard the Mass Transit Administration.
Fortunately, my experience was no more costly than the $1.25 to travel from Timonium to the Camden Yards stop.
It was Saturday, and not a lot of people were on the train until we arrived at the North Avenue stop. A lot got on then.
We were jettisoning a car, so we had a long time at the stop. I had a great chance to take in the environment, including a couple of Baltimore City's finest youth with large stones in their hands.
It was at this point I realized how I had placed myself foolishly at risk. There was no security on our train, not even a ticket taker until the next stop. No one was ever asked to show proof of purchase, and I didn't blame them.
If any "event" had occurred, I would have had no exit and no protection. I was captive for the last 15 minutes of that ride . . .
When I met my wife, who had driven downtown, I related much of the kind of sentiment that your article mentioned.
As far as extending light rail to the Hunt Valley area, well, I guess that would be a great idea. Didn't a recent article in your paper point out that the mall there is the safest?
The light rail would certainly change that in a hurry.
Jim Althoff
Phoenix
Kurt Cobain
Mike Littwin's column April 15 was one of many that I read about the death of Kurt Cobain. that I really agreed with.
The weekend after Mr. Cobain's body was found by an electrician, three major newspapers featured front-page stories on the unfortunate suicide, one of them The Sun.
MTV played nothing but Nirvana videos, old band interviews or Nirvana Unplugged. MTV's Kurt Loder sadly remembered what a great musician Cobain had been, while urging teens who were thinking of suicide to call suicide hot-lines. Several radio stations played tributes to the late singer.
Time contained an article on the life and death of Mr. Cobain, and People had a cover story about him.
Mr. Littwin voiced my opinion well when he wrote, "Those most familiar with Cobain say that's everything he wouldn't have wanted. They say he hated hype." Hype is exactly what this is.
I feel that Mr. Cobain did not want to be the spokesman of "Generation X," but to speak for himself alone.
I doubt he asked to be the "voice of a generation." Maybe if he hadn't been forced to, he would still be alive today.
Katie McErlean
Columbia
Loving Young
I am dismayed that Susan Reimer believes (or at least gives enough credence to put into her April 18 column) in telling teen-aged girls "to wait for a better lover" -- that is, to wait for older men because boys aren't interested in giving pleasure.
Contrary to the old conservative canard about "babies having babies," 73 percent of all the babies born to girls under 20 are fathered by men over 20, according to the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics. And the percentage gets higher the younger the girl gets.
Karen M. Davis
Maryland City
Why We Exonerate Nixon
To hear and read the media commentary since Richard Nixon's death on April 22, 20 years and his dying seem to have transformed the man who prolonged the Vietnam War five years beyond his election, covered up his role in Watergate, faced impeachment and received a highly unpopular presidential pardon into an elder statesman who, somehow during those two decades, managed to outlive his crimes and many of his accusers and recapture a place on the stage of world politics.
It is considered bad form to speak ill of the dead, even when they deserve it. And besides, in strictly human terms, anyway, death is its own victory over a dead person.
Removed from the scene, he or she is no longer a threat. We are free to remember only what is congenial to remember. For the first time now, we really won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore.
Why have so many been so eager to exonerate Nixon? I think it is mainly because by forgiving him, we forgive ourselves -- for electing him, twice, to the presidency and for what his six years in that job cost this nation.
Nixon was our Jungian shadow, the dark, somewhat inaccessible part of ourselves that we do not Tylor Jones own and readily project onto others. He embodied and lived out instincts we would rather not acknowledge.
Fear of Russia and China that flared up in conflicts in small Third World countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, fear of dissent and violence here at home that grew in response to the wars fought there, cleverly exploited by his administration as issues of "law and order" -- all bound us to Nixon.
It is generally agreed that we have not yet fully come to terms with what the Vietnam War did to this country (or to Vietnam, for that matter).
It took many years after the peace accord was signed in 1973 to recognize that a significant part of a generation had been badly scarred and that a country had been morally compromised in a way not previously thought possible (it was, remember, the "brightest and the best" who got us into Vietnam before the "worst" appeared on the scene after the 1968 election).
With Nixon gone, we may not have to continue the process of working through the trauma of his legacy. Letting him off the hook, we let ourselves off. Gerald R. Ford pardoned him, now it's our turn.
Perhaps this country has finally caught up to Richard Nixon. Maybe the blatant amorality of the 1980s sanctioned by Ronald Reagan and George Bush make it possible to retrospectively re-create Nixon as an acceptable leader, amorally doing what he had to do at the time to defend the "honor" of America.
If "greed is good," the implicit moral stance of Reagan/Bush, then "dirty tricks" and "Tricky Dick" are okay, too. If Nixon was all right, so are we.
We can get on with our lives now.
Rene J. Muller
Baltimore
Little Horses
Your editorial on Baltimore's threatened arabbers (April 25) brought out some good points. If I may, I would like to add a few more.
It is bad enough that the little horses are mistreated, but worse yet when we come to the realization that when their usefulness is exploited and thus terminated they have a very good chance of ending up in the slaughterhouse.
After all, in this day few people have the space to house a horse, even a little one. Many people can't even afford a pet of the smaller variety. Food and veterinary care in order to assure a good life do not come cheap.
And sadly, even politics takes a role in the lives of helpless animals. In New York City, where many of its residents fought for years to keep the carriage horses out of midtown traffic and out of extreme hot and cold temperatures, the former Dinkins administration saw fit to see that those rules came to naught.
There will always be those who make a living by exploiting another living creature, be it human or animal.
Hopefully there are enough caring people in Baltimore to make it possible for a tradition to be kept alive, to see that these animals have a good life and at the same time provide a livelihood for some good responsible human beings.
Lucy Katz
Baltimore