No Messiahs
Some words are necessary to complete the Dec. 4 Sunday Sun exposition on St. Francis. Our community felt that the soul of St. Francis was neglected, if not belittled.
St. Francis shares the same ground, breathes the same air and walks the same streets as the most regular and struggling of its neighbors. The dogs, the needles, the dealers, the sirens, the shots, the fights affect us all. So also do the calls, the prayers, the visits, the advice, the caring, the grieving, the listening and the loving.
The soul of St. Francis grows from its neighborhood point of view. St. Francis came from outside this fragmented and frightened area and saw beyond the blight into the lives of the real people toiling under the crust.
Eventually, a people of usually dashed hopes came to believe that St. Francis wasn't going anywhere else. It cared enough to stay. Why are people anywhere else any more important than the people of Whitelock Street? We did not offer their names for interview lest they be seen merely as effectiveness-measurements in the great social experiment of the '60s. There must be respect.
Some of these folks are the people to whom Dr. John Taylor ministers through the St. Francis Mobile Dental Service. He comes as a dentist to the hidden, homebound and unsung and leaves as friend and healer. The power of St. Francis pours
through his hands and voice and ears.
St. Francis and our community are sources from which all of us draw our power to touch. We travel many streets: dental patients, religious congregants, students, restaurant patrons, music lovers, party goers, nursing home residents, ethics class participants. All hear of St. Francis on Whitelock Street. From Los Angeles to Boston to Vancouver to Bolivia, someone knows of our people. The foolishness of St. Francis stands against the wisdom of the marketplace.
There are no grand and powerful maxi-messiahs coming on the clouds of heaven making footstocks of brigands. There are only local messiahs, imperfect and struggling, drawing the maps, sharing the hopes, teaching the Bible school, feeding the neighbor just home from the hospital, listening to the teen just aware that she has AIDS.
The Rev. Tom Composto
Baltimore
The writer is director of St. Francis Community Center.
Not Rejected
As president of the Coldspring Community Association, I was pleased to see our new development highlighted in the Nov. 29 editorial, "Coldspring Goes Suburban'." However, I want to make you and your readers aware of a gross error.
The new addition to our community has not rejected Coldspring. In fact the correct name of the project is the Woodlands at Coldspring.
Just as the Ruscombe Gardens apartment and Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center are part of Coldspring, so the Woodlands at Coldspring will be.
The new residents will become part of the Coldspring community. They will be entitled to use of the community facilities, will be members of the board of the Coldspring Community Association and will enjoy all the wonderful advantages that Coldspring has to offer.
As was pointed out, Coldspring has a splendid location and we are moving forward.
At long last, we are moving toward being more complete. Diverse but one, not a bad model for communities everywhere.
Alex J. Kramer
Baltimore
The Blues
I find the headlines to the article on the Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Maryland's restructuring proposal, Nov. 24, to be unfortunate.
They would leave the reader with the impression that I have prejudged the proposal, even before the hearing which I will conduct on Dec. 19 and 20. I have made no such preliminary judgment and intend to keep an open mind on the matter until the hearing.
I will be intensely interested in whatever arguments are presented for and against the proposal at the hearing.
!Dwight K. Bartlett III
Baltimore
The writer is insurance commissioner of Maryland.
President Zinman
A Sun-ny Saturday morning (Nov. 12) as I read with dismay in Susan Baer's article that the Republican "attack dogs" are waiting to leap on our president. Are they preparing to govern this nation, or are they only intent on bringing down a man whose brains, intellect and personal warmth they might envy but cannot imitate?
Then I read Jack Germond and Jules Witcover's careful reporting as they dissect the lies that grew like poisonous weeds out of the recent campaign.
Then came the Sunshine of the morning in the wonderful performance and review of the BSO's outstanding performances their current tour of Japan.
I glowed with pride at the reception our BSO received in Tokyo at Suntory Hall. Perhaps David Zinman should run for president, as he seems best qualified to achieve perfect harmony.
Sylvia B. Mandy
Baltimore
Shadow Government in Thin Ice City
In "From Sore Loser to Shadow Governor" (Nov. 27), editorial page director Barry Rascovar refers to the long-standing British parliamentary practice of having a "shadow government" formed the opposition.
He then suggests that defeated gubernatorial nominee and election-fraud conspiracy-seeker Ellen Sauerbrey, who still thinks she ought to be in the State House come January, might try organizing a similar "shadow government" in Annapolis, with shadow cabinet positions held by various other well-known wannabes and ex-es, thus giving them something to do over their next four years in limbo.
As a put-down, it was a neat plate of editorial sushi. But in slicing those political eels he left out a key factor, and thereby missed the chance to raise what could be a genuinely good idea.
In the British parliamentary system, the prime minister is the leader of the governing party. But the P.M. is not elected by the general public, only as an ordinary member of Parliament by voters in his or her own home district.
The majority party's M.P.s then formally name their leader from out of their own body -- though of course everyone in the country already knows very well who it will be.
The new P.M. then proceeds to name his or her cabinet and all the lesser ministry seats -- all of these also being sitting M.P.s of the majority party.
These people thus wear two hats: that of a parliamentary district representative and also of a governing secretariat boss.
And as this is put together, the opposition is doing the same thing; creating an exact counterpart using its own coterie of sitting M.P.s. This is the "shadow government," and the shadow is very real.
Is the minister of transport recommending some scheme to pave half of the national forests for parking lots?
In a similar job here, he could hustle even the pottiest notions with relative impunity. But in Britain, he will instantly have to face his counterpart -- the opposition's shadow minister of transport, who will most likely become that party's own minister of transport if they win the next election, whose minority party job is to incessantly dog the incumbent's heels, who has parking schemes of his own, and who meanwhile is always ready to produce objections, caveats, and demands for detail at a moment's notice.
And do it from right across the aisle in Parliament, in front of God and television and everybody.
This arrangement keeps all on their toes, and is Thin Ice City for any pol who tries to slip one by, or put rhetoric ahead of reality.
British "shadow government" is not -- as Mr. Rascovar slyly suggested for Sauerbrey et al. -- a gaggle of non-responsible outside wannabes, washouts, has-beens or unknowns.
On the contrary, they are all high-profile, sitting, elected officials, subject to open political process and public give-and-take, who can and will be held accountable for every word and issue-vote.
The beauty of the system is that, unlike ourselves, British voters do not have to rely on hope and imagination, or candidates wishfully pulled out of the sky, come election time.
They already know the actual working records of all the likely leaders in each big job, and can re-elect or dump them accordingly.
It would be most interesting to see the Maryland Republican Party form a genuine shadow government of its incoming minority delegates and senators.
It would offer a superb training ground, give them something truly useful to do, mightily entertain and enlighten the public, and undoubtedly regularly make the Democrats sweat and think twice -- something they haven't had to do in decades.
Frank Pierce Young
Annapolis