Waltersplace
It is hardly a surprise to learn that the Walters Art Gallery made money with the recent Gaugin show. They had a real winner.
Everyone wanted to see the collection, and they had a full line of gift-shop items, with or without enflowered bathroom paper.
But is this the real purpose of a major art museum? Museum-going should be a habit, not entertainment, and please not an indulgence.
The least it would have cost two senior citizens, for example, to have seen the Van Gogh show was $10.
The Walters has become an extension of Harborplace, complete even to provision of an expensive restaurant. Art as part of real life has retreated to Wyman Park Drive.
Jane Spencer
Baltimore
No more jazz
Historians traditionally have taken wars to be the boundary between eras.
Baltimore, like many other cities in the aftermath of World War II, experienced an enlarged and anxious population, socioeconomic changes and cultural transitions, including a vibrant jazz scene.
Jazz in Baltimore became linked to night clubs after the war. This venue became the means for national and local jazz musicians to practice their craft while earning a livelihood.
Jazz lovers from all over the city and from Washington flocked to places too numerous to name here. And they often continued their musical revelry after legal hours in club cellars, alley coffee houses and private homes.
The late Wilfred "Mickey" Fields, a saxophonist who also performed on other instruments, started his musical career as a teen-ager in the aftermath of World War II. He personified the free-lance jazz musician in Baltimore: He never worked at any other occupation and played every jazz venue in the city. His demise represents the ending of an era.
Because of the loss of interest in jazz by recording companies, radio and television, and the demise of night clubs as a musical venue, free-lance jazz music-making has passed away. Audiences prefer the herd that assembles at festival, stadiums or arenas to the intimacy of the club.
The post WWII generation of jazz lovers must content itself with compact discs and videos. Unfortunately, jazz is now created for vTC home consumption by a small, select, older group of consumers who are, perhaps, "clinging to some fading thing that use to be."
Reppard Stone
Baltimore
Equal lives
The man whom John Earl Williams killed was a police officer. To deny Williams privileges on that regard is to place a higher value on a policeman's life than on that of, say, a street sweeper. This the law must not do.
Indeed, when sentencing anyone's killer or considering their parole applications, no heed should be paid to the "cries of outrage" of the victim's families.
To refuse parole or stiffen a sentence on the basis of whom someone killed is to value one human life over another.
Were I slain, my wife, family and friends might troop down to a parole hearing, crying out against my slayer's release. He might be refused parole because of this.
The murderer next in line might be paroled, if he had had the "good fortune" to kill a homeless drifter with no one to speak for him.
I was taught that justice is no respecter of persons. This must apply to the victim as well as to the offender.
Tom M. Padwa
Baltimore
Social Security series exposed massive fraud
Your comprehensive series on the Supplemental Security Income and Disability Insurance programs is the finest journalism I have read in a long time, maybe ever.
Were I on the selection committee, Jim Haner and John O'Donnell would win Pulitzer prizes hands down.
The questions raised by these revelations are staggering and range from the mounting deficit to the welfare of little children. In between is the question of whether representative government is really working.
The very word "program" has become anathema to me when used in a government context.
The interface where the intentions of the Congress -- good or stupid -- become cash transfers is a leaky barrier indeed. I fear no such program has ever been administered without fraud.
SSI is but one example, distinguished only by its magnitude and its effect upon individuals. . . .
arren Richards
Baltimore
It is unfortunate that your Jan. 23 article on Supplemental Security Income and the addict implied that a person with addictive disease is an incorrigible who will never make it.
The reader is left with the impression that society should throw certain people away. The fact is, the addict and his problems are not going to go away easily.
The success rate for addiction treatment is proportionate to the number of treatment beds and appropriateness of the treatment.
Baltimore has gone from one of the best cities for advocacy and treatment to one of the worst.
The few dollars available for addiction services are distributed to providers who have no historical perspective on addiction treatment. They are destined to use treatment approaches that have been tried and failed . . .
Thousands of recovered alcoholics and addicts in Baltimore and Maryland have been clean and sober for years. Of those who have recovered in the last five to seven years, there are two types:
Most low-income people had to recover on their own because treatment beds have vanished. They have no models based on established halfway houses or residential support systems.
They detoxed not in medically supervised facilities that cared for their seizures, delirium, internal bleeding, kidney shutdowns and the like, but on the street, in parking garages, in the spaces under our floors.
Most higher income addicts were sent to 12-step meetings by private psychiatrists, who continued to treat them with misconceptions about addictive disease.
They have never seen a detoxing alcoholic or drug addict, having never occupied a bed in a detox or a halfway house.
When they send donations to drug and alcohol programs, they are not really sure what works and don't know that nine times out of 10 their money is used to hand out doses of one addictive drug to treat addiction to another.
We are nearing the end of a century that held out hope for alcoholics and their first cousins, drug addicts.
This century saw the tireless work of Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Mrs. Marty Mann, founder of the National Council on Alcoholism and, locally, W. B. Criddle, who founded the TuerkeHouse and many other recovery houses.
The work of these people and others demonstrated that permanent recovery happens all the time.
What it takes is a commitment to the solution, not an exploitation of the problem.
At a time when we need treatment more than ever, what we get is political scapegoating of the poor and the sick.
The people who are doing this may be poor and sick themselves one day.
Maureen Martindale
Baltimore
Talk radio: a wasteland of bores and losers
When Jeff Beauchamp, station manager of WBAL radio, says, "I'd say [the daily lineup] is conservative . . . but hopefully, the callers will provide balance," he misses the point.
Why not bring in a host that is closer to the center and brings more balance at the source?
I certainly don't intend to try to bring "balance" to this lineup. It stresses all the more the need for National Public Radio.
Al Buls
Baltimore
First Jeff Beauchamp of WBAL-AM put on "The Rush Limbaugh Show" (giving a forum to the most irresponsible man in America) and bumped the talented Dan Rodricks to the limbo of Saturday morning.
If that wasn't boneheaded enough, he's giving another right-winger, Ellen Sourgrapes, the night slot and putting dull Ron Smith in the afternoon, taking off altogether the afternoon news journal.
WBAL, where they say the news comes first, is fast becoming a wasteland for bores and losers. What happened to all of those awards the "News Journal" kept winning?
Somebody call 911: Jeff Beauchamp's credibility has fallen and can't get up. I'd rather listen to the sad sound of the wind whistle through my air-conditioner vent.
At least we still have Dave Durian and the morning team. Until David Duke teams up with Oliver North for a "Countdown to the End of Anybody Not Like Us" marathon, WBAL can't make a more anti-liberal stance.
My radio's on scan.
Jeff Dugan
Reisterstown