Byzantine Rite
As a parishioner of St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church, I was elated to see the artistically drawn picture of my new church in the Sept. 24 Sun.
This church, built in unique Ukrainian Baroque style, truly adds a new architectural form to Baltimore's landmarks. It is also a proud witness to the ethnic diversity of our city's population, the Ukrainian community of which is a part.
But St. Michael's also represents something more. Being a Catholic church of the Byzantine rite, it is a witness to the universality of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church does not possess one Roman rite, as some may be thinking. There are six main rites in the Catholic Church: the Alexandrian, Antiochean, Armenian, Byzantine, Chaldean and Roman. They all recognize the pope of Rome as the visible head of Christ's church on earth.
Although the Roman rite today is numerically the largest, all rites within the Catholic Church are of equal dignity and none is superior to the other. No one is allowed to change his rite at will.
The existence of many rites within the Catholic Church is the most powerful witness to the universality of this church.
Wolodymyr C. Sushko
Baltimore
Larry Reich
In addition to his contributions in planning, Larry Reich leaves another monumental legacy in the city.
It was his initiative that resulted in critical action to bring the cancer research center at Johns Hopkins Hospital into reality. Unable to obtain state money from the departments involved because of the time limitations, we decided that I would sponsor a bond bill for $2 million to meet requirements of the application. (This was, incidentally, the first bond bill to bypass the Department of Planning and go directly to the General Assembly.)
Gov. Marvin Mandel signed the bill after the 1972 session and the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center became one of the 10 federally funded regional centers in the country.
Rosalie Silber Abrams
Baltimore
The writer, a former state senator, is director of the Maryland Office on Aging.
Dioxin
Your coverage of the Environmental Protection Agency's dioxin reassessment missed an important part of the story: There are good technologies to control dioxin. I represent one of the few industries that are currently regulated, waste-to-energy plants, which use trash as fuel to generate electricity and steam. We have been on the forefront of dioxin control technology.
The power plants we've built over the past decade prove that these dioxin controls work very effectively.
But unless the EPA investigates other sources of dioxin, these technologies will just sit on the shelf. The EPA report -- by its own numbers -- accounts for less than half the dioxin sources. Major dioxin sources, well-known in Europe, are not counted as "known" sources in the report.
As several environmental groups have said, the EPA's first priority should be to investigate dioxin sources that are currently unregulated. Our own industry's record proves that the solutions exist.
Maria Zannes
Washington
The writer is president of Integrated Waste Services Association.
Little Italy
I am responding to the Sept. 17 letter, "Italian Restaurants," by Matthew E. Russ, who was driven to write because the taste buds of restaurant critic Elizabeth Large did not agree with his own.
Although Ms. Large's critique focused on the food of Strapazza, Mr. Russ wasted no time in bashing Baltimore and the community of Little Italy.
He cites one experience of "sub-standard" dining and instantly all of Baltimore's Little Italy restaurants are collectively trashed.
Although some Little Italy restaurants are better than others, I would expect a well-traveled connoisseur of Italian food to be able to figure out which are the better restaurants in Little Italy (especially after living here for nine years).
I think it is a cheap shot to criticize and generalize about the community of Little Italy because a clam sauce failed to meet some arbitrary standard. Mr. Russ should not be so quick to condemn our community.
There are many celebrities and dignitaries who return to Little Italy because they enjoy the food and atmosphere of our community. Little Italy is more than just restaurants.
Our neighborhood is full of wonderful people who work together, worship together at St. Leo's church, and go out of their way to make you feel comfortable, safe and welcomed. Blanket criticisms hurt more than just our restaurants.
Unfortunately, Mr. Russ didn't run into me. I would have spoken to him in any dialect of Italian he could muster. And I would have told him just where he could get a good red clam sauce.
Robert Marsili
Baltimore
Maryland's Success in Containing Health Care Costs
Recently, John Woodruff reported on the high amount of price inflation in Maryland during June and July.
The article said that medical costs, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, rose 12.3 percent in Baltimore for the year ending July, compared to the national average of 4.6 percent.
The article quoted Michael A. Conte, director of regional economic studies for the University of Baltimore.
Mr. Conte opined that this result should cause people in Annapolis "to rethink Maryland's decision to set itself so far apart from the national health-care cost regimen."
He also said that "Maryland chose to go for both maximum quality and maximum access, and to put less emphasis on cost containment, and these figures are likely to force some reconsideration of those priorities."
Mr. Conte should know better.
The article, as well as these and other quotes, suggests that the CPI's increase relates closely to the work of the Health Services Cost Review Commission, which regulates hospital rates.
In fact, less than 30 percent of the Baltimore CPI is associated with hospital rates, while over 65 percent is associated with drug, medical supply and doctor, dentist, eye care and other medical professional services which are not regulated by the cost review panel.
The CPI measures increases in prices to households. It is a particularly poor measure of hospital cost increases because most hospital payments come from business and government -- and those are not measured at all by the CPI.
(The CPI does not measure nursing home price changes because, by Bureau of Labor Statistics definition, the people in nursing homes are not part of households but live in institutions.)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not prepare specific inflation rates for Baltimore hospital, drug and physician prices.
Those rates are not calculated on a city-by-city basis, but only nationally. That is because the sample in each day is not large enough to make the numbers meaningful.
The article states that "Maryland is the only state that has succeeded in exempting itself from federal Medicare cost regulation."
But Maryland has to meet a cost containment test to keep its exemption from the federal Medicare payment system.
This exemption, Maryland's Medicare waiver, is maintained only so long as the rate of increase in Medicare payment per discharge since 1981 is lower in the state of Maryland than Medicare has achieved nationally.
In fact, American Hospital Association data show that since 1981, Maryland has had the lowest rate of increase in cost per admission and the lowest rate of increase in charge per admission of any state in the country.
Maryland has gone from well above the national average in costs and charges per case to well below the national average.
So much for underemphasis on cost containment.
Hal Cohen
Baltimore
The writer, a health care consultant, is a former chairman of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission.
In Support of Magnet Schools
I feel The Sun has done an injustice to Baltimore County's magnet schools.
My son attends Eastwood Center; this is his first year there. I was very upset by The Sun's Sept 18 article on magnet schools. From what I have seen at Eastwood we have a very diverse group of students; there may have been problems at other magnet schools but I don't see why The Sun should condemn all the magnet schools when there are such wonderful things happening at these schools.
I chose to send my son to Eastwood because it is the only alternative I have to regular public school; it is also more personalized and more responsive to my child's and my needs. I want to be involved in my child's education, and Eastwood gives me that opportunity. They want my input, they want to know my expectations. This mutual respect inspires the staff and the parents. Feeling respect makes the parent want to help the school, and parents being seen involving themselves in the child's education inspires the child to succeed.
The success of our children is what is most important. My child has only been in school for a short time, but what I have seen in that time is wonderful. I did not make this decision lightly. I talked to many parents, I discussed it with my family, and most of all asked a lot of questions of the staff. The staff was very open with me and gave me the opportunity to visit the classes.
My final decision probably came from talking to the parents, though: Every parent I spoke to was enthusiastic and they all spoke of wonderful progress their children made. This was the environment I wanted my child to be in. Instead of writing negative articles about magnet schools, The Sun should do a follow-up positive piece. The parents and staff would be more than happy to help you with an article that shows the good side of magnet schools and to show how the good far outweighs the bad.
Jennifer S. Czawlytko
Baltimore
In your article "Mania for magnet schools raises questions" (Sept. 18), the very title sets the tone for a piece overflowing with interesting choices of adjectives that leave me feeling very uncomfortable.
Take "mania," for example. Is it maniacal that parents are seeking alternatives to the traditional schools in Baltimore County?
Given all the debate over the past two years regarding the county's method for delivering education to all of its students, I would think that the magnet programs would be embraced as a timely solution to a variety of problems.
If it is maniacal that the parents of 400 children took the risk of moving their children from the comfort zones that seven very fine neighborhood schools represent to the experiment that magnets are being characterized as, then I suppose we are guilty as charged. None of the over 200 parents that I have spoken with have indicated that the decision was an easy one.
Mary Maushard asks in her article: "Will magnets siphon all the good students and many good teachers from neighborhood schools?" And "Will magnets create two-tier education and foster elitism?"
This "elitist" group of people came from seven different schools that draw children from three times that number of neighborhoods.
Our students are African American, Caucasian, Asian and Latin. All of our children are "gifted and talented" in the eyes of their parents.
Children who are academically advanced, those who are academically challenged and those who are "average" grace our halls. Ours is an inclusive, not an exclusive, community. Our children did not take an achievement test to be admitted, their parents did not submit a financial statement.
We shared the common bond of seeking an alternative opportunity for academic success for our children. For the first time we were given a choice about where and how our children would be educated.
Do we have all of the good students, the good teachers and the motivated parents in the Greater Towson Area attending Cromwell Valley Elementary? If I were a parent, teacher or student at Hampton, Stoneleigh, Villa Cresta, Hillendale, Rodgers Forge, Pleasant Plains or Oakleigh, I would be insulted by the inference made by this article. Like every one of these schools, magnets
are only as good as the school community wants them to be.
Despite budget cuts, exploding populations and confusion about direction, every one of these neighborhood schools has maintained a long tradition of excellence. Cromwell Valley will not change that, we are simply an alternative.
The picture of "elitist" parents with "magnet mania" is certainly not an accurate depiction of the Cromwell Valley Elementary community. Is our school different from the schools we left behind? Yes, it is in that the method for delivering the curriculum is different. Will our approach be more successful? That remains be seen.
We are a group of families, teachers and administrators attempting to form a new community committed to quality education for our children and we are struggling to do so in a fish bowl environment created by articles like this one. Given the time, magnets will succeed or fail based not on public opinion, politics or debate, but on how much and how well the children who participate in these programs learn.
Kathryn M. Bojanowski
Baltimore
The writer is president, Cromwell Valley Elementary PTA.
Baseball, a Business, Will Return
I would like to comment on the assertion of major league baseball's Bud Selig, who stood before Congress with a straight face arguing that the 1922 Supreme Court holding that professional baseball is exempt from the nation's antitrust laws should continue to be the law of the land in 1994. With all due respect to the memory of the great Oliver Wendell Holmes, who xTC authored the court's opinion, that decision was wrong in 1922 and is most certainly wrong today in 1994.
Holmes concluded that the game of baseball was simply not "commerce" and therefore did not have to come under the purview of antitrust laws that were designed to break up the influence of the cartels or "trusts" that monopolized industries such as oil, steel and the railroads.
As Ken Burns' excellent documentary "Baseball" aptly demonstrates, during the first decades of the 20th century, baseball was big business for the owners. Players were virtual slaves to the owners of the team.
There was no opportunity for free agency. Once a player signed with a club, it was for life. The player had no means for redress.
The time has definitely come to begin treating baseball like the big business that it is. I am not so naive to think that subjecting baseball to the antitrust laws will magically solve the impasse of the dispute between the players and the owners. Antitrust laws haven't kept players and owners in basketball, football and hockey from bickering.
However, it would impose some standards of fairness in the way the business of baseball is conducted. It will also allow both the players and the owners to air their grievances against each other in a court of law. Furthermore, since the antitrust laws were designed with the public interest in mind, perhaps the interests of the fans could finally be represented.
Today baseball is most certainly "commerce"; it is big business. For example, the New York Yankees entered into a $1 billion contract for the cable television rights for its games! But despite such huge earnings, Bud Selig wants affirmative action, preferential treatment. He wants Congress and the American people to believe that the national pastime is somehow different from all the other sports that are subject to antitrust laws. It's time for Congress to strike out the antitrust exemption and insist that the owners start playing on an even field.
Jonathan Paul Luna
Baltimore
To the owners and players:
You fools. You just don't get it, do you? You don't understand the simple fact that it is the game that matters. It's the game that draws us to the ballpark in the summer and fuels our hot stoves in the winter. It's the game that has allowed us to ignore the venal, greedy and cavalier attitude of the owners to the traditions of baseball. It's the game that has allowed us to forgive the ugly attitudes and behaviors of many players off the field.
You fools. It is the game that enthralls us and keeps us coming back for more. It's the crackling curve ball and the blur of the fast ball. It's the breathtaking suspense of the runner and the ball arriving at the plate at the same time. It's the incredible grace of the double play and the majestic power of the home run.
It's the strength and time of the leaping catch at the wall. It's that wonderful feeling that time is standing still, yet the game just might go on forever. It's the joy of passing on to your children the legacies of Josh Gibson and Babe Ruth and the camaraderie you feel with the fan sitting next to you. It's the aroma of hot dogs and french fries and the sound of the bat meeting the ball. It's rooting for the home team in a hot pennant race.
You just don't get it, do you? It is our connection to the traditions and rhythms of the game that makes us come. You have severed that connection, and that we cannot ignore or forgive.
You ignorant fools. You may have lost us forever.
Edie Williams
Columbia
The strike and the ending of the baseball season dealt a nast blow to the avid fans of all ages. These fans love the game of baseball, to cheer, the thrills, the boos, the hoot-'n'-holler, the everydayness and all that goes with the great pleasure of watching the national pastime.
As for the hurt the fans have taken, the most faithful fans wouldn't call themselves suckers, but will be back gradually, slowly but surely, as time heals all aches and pains.
Baseball is not ready for the mortuary; a resurrection is bound to happen; new life will emerge again, as if nothing happened, but it did!
Joseph T. Kasprzak
Baltimore
Judging Candidates
It has been said that Americans have no principles, values or standards in any of the four areas of our lives -- social, political, religious and economic.
I would touch on only one tiny corner of this vast abstraction by proffering a political standard by which the next election (and any future election) can be guided onto the right track.
The four political pillars are:
National security; limited government; individual rights (life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness), and a sound economy.
Ask the candidates to say where they stand on these basics and we will be able to judge the ones with the character to lead our constitutional republic.
Keep the flame glowing.
Margaret Resh Tinkler
Reisterstown