Holiday Question

Here comes another Fourth of July. Let me ask again, "If I can buy a gun, why can't I buy a firecracker?"

George Wroe

Glyndon

Describing Women

I read an article about Jeffrey Kimble, Lotto winner; Gerald Glass, attorney for the Baltimore Housing Authority; Alfred Murphy, warden of the Baltimore City Detention Center booking unit, and Margaret Jensvold, psychiatrist.

I'm just curious -- what color are Mr. Kimble's eyes? Does Mr. Glass wear glasses? How about Mr. Murphy's hands? Delicate? Massive? I'm just dying to know.

After all, this must be pertinent information, if it was important enough to be included in the article about Dr. Jensvold.

This is not on isolated incident. I am mystified as to the reasoning behind the use of such description of women, but never of men, in articles related to their qualifications for highly

regarded, specialized, professional positions.

Jane F. Riley

Towson

No to Tabloidism

Is anyone else beginning to weary of the dreary repetition of a sequence of events which is rapidly becoming as lugubriously inevitable as death and taxes on the national political scene?

The sequence is this: (1) The present administration begins to get some real momentum going on an issue of vital interest to the American people such as gun control, health care reform or establishing some minimal degree of accountability for the CIA, and then (2) someone else crawls out of the wall with an unsubstantiated but highly publicized charge against President Clinton.

As the wise old philosopher David Hume said, you can't see and therefore postulate with absolute certainty the causal connection between a sequence of events, but you can talk in terms of a high degree of probability of causation when the same sequence repeats itself over and over and over.

The latest in this unwieldy, seamy parade of dirty tricks (a peculiarly un-American legacy of the late lamented ex-president) across the American political scene is not as Stephen Hess said, "For Bill Clinton . . . a perpetual low-grade toothache that is not going to go away."

It is a perpetual low-grade toothache for the American people, and it will not go away as long as it gets the only encouragement it needs to proliferate and continue, i.e., a spot on the front page.

To curb this chronic, debilitating, demoralizing infection we need the antibiotic of journalism, not the culture medium of tabloidism.

Please put such things on the inside pages where they belong, and have your best writers do a responsible job of painting the whole picture. A dose of perspective does wonders to clear the head and reduce inflammation.

Anna Vought

Fallston

Chemically Insane

Re: John Thanos' death by alleged lethal injection: I feel he was chemically insane and, although his crimes were heinous, the crimes were behavior that one can expect of a habitual drug user.

We can expect a French poodle to act like a French poodle and a lion to act like a lion. Likewise, one can expect a habitual user of drugs to behave in ways totally divorced from rationality.

The message that Thanos' life and death have for me is that if we want more rational behavior in our nation, we need to go after the supply of drugs being manufactured here and those coming across our borders and into the country by planes and boats, mail, etc.

And we need to clean up TV. In addition, our nation is, nominally at least, 80 percent Christian. The Master Christian said, "You have heard it said of old, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' but I say unto you that whoever is angry with his brother is in danger of judgment."

In our allegedly Christian nation we are behaving as if Jesus never lived nor died . . . acting as if we don't even understand what he taught.

I'm appalled at the spectacle of people being allowed to watch executions, and appalled at the number of persons who wanted to seen an obviously chemically insane man suffer at his execution. Next we'll be building pits for gladiators.

If we want people to act rationally, we need to clean up drugs, and we need also to clean up the bill of fare we're being served on TV.

The subconscious works on pictures. Put a picture in and you'll get it acted out by a great number of people. We can expect bizarre and violent behaviors if we continue to allow drugs. The same for violence on TV.

Eileen Evans

Baltimore

Why Death

There's a saying that goes: Locks are only to keep honest people honest. Michael Olesker, in his column May 12, wonders if the taking of life by state decree gets us as a society anywhere, if it matters after all.

If it were not for the fact that society could depend on its government to act for it, we might very well re-live the days of the vigilante where individuals took the law, or rather the punishment of the law, into their own hands.

The argument that capital punishment will not deter crime is not the issue. Criminals break the law because there is no fear either of the law or its consequences.

However, the person who fears the law or its consequences notes the place in our lives the law holds and so, like the lock on the door, is more prone to let the lock be a warning not to go any further.

It is not the deterrence of crime that society seeks, necessarily, but rather the fulfillment of justice. The death penalty is society's way of saying that justice has been served.

It can certainly be understood that those who have been horribly wronged by the vicious, murderous acts of the Bundys, Thanoses and Dahmers might feel good about the sentences, especially if that sentence tends toward revenge.

And there is a definite good feeling, sometimes, when vengeance has taken its course. Does the taking of a life under these circumstances matter after all? Sure!

Daniel F. Serrano

Conowingo

North's Needs

When Oliver North entered the political arena, announcing that he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia, a breath of fresh air seemed to have swept away the stale atmosphere lingering within the conservative Republican ranks of that state.

Here was a candidate who would put his party over the top. He had charisma, exposure and oratory skills.

He was surrounded by an air of the "boy next door" and the aura of patriotism. He also seemed to intend to rise above petty politics.

It, therefore, came as a big surprise when Colonel North, speaking in Culpeper before a Republican women's club used derision, describing those who would oppose him as the "permanent, political potentates of pork."

This trite and cute alliteration betrays a rather facile approach to a campaign where he should talk about the real problems he would have to face were he to be elected to the Senate.

The above words are not enough to defeat an opponent. There must be substantive plans and programs to affect changes. If Oliver North wants to be that breath of fresh air, by rising above the status quo, he will have to avoid the pitfalls of becoming just another piddling, petulant, pleonastic politician.

Leo Bretholz

Baltimore

Rainy Day Colors

Jed Kirschbaum captured the beautiful colors of a Monet painting in his May 5 rainy-day photograph of the annual Flower Mart.

How fortunate we Baltimoreans are to have him, especially those unable to venture outdoors in inclement weather.

Rose P. Rubin

Baltimore

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Saving photos of Jed Kirschbaum's is getting to be a habit for me. The Flower Mart was spell-binding.

June Peacock

Cockeysville