What to Do with the Constellation
What should be done with the ship Constellation, now moored in Baltimore's Inner Harbor and mischaracterized as the first U.S. Navy war frigate, launched in Baltimore in 1797?
Britain has preserved and maintained two of her famous sailing ships -- HMS Victory, launched in 1765, on which Adm. Horatio Nelson sailed and was killed in 1805, and the clipper ship Cutty Sark, launched in 1869.
Admittedly only about 10 percent of the original Victory still exists in the ship. Both of these ships are mounted on land, out of the water.
Today, both are in excellent condition and open to the public. Probably upkeep is less expensive when ships are preserved out of the water.
The Constellation, for historical reasons, should be preserved, and serious consideration made for mounting it out of water, for cost-saving reasons.
Dennis Stevens
Linthicum
So the Constellation Foundation, "nearly broke," promises some lawyer with an exotic resume $4,500 a month, until May or the money runs out (article, Feb. 9). Yet another case of white-collar welfare?
Of course, winning public support will be "an uphill battle." I'd like to see what cleverness will go into "interpreting" to the rest of us how rebuilding, again and again, an old wooden ship is preserving for us the same wooden ship.
DReplace the hull, replace the masts, the decks, the forecastle . . . C'mon, where's the original ship?
This could the Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin of Baltimore. (Go ahead, tell us that unburied corpse isn't substantially replacement parts.)
This dear old monument to the past needs a nice Jack Kevorkian who would gently lift her sagging body out the water and lay her down on a prepared dockside bier.
For generations, then, visitors to the Inner Harbor could pass by, pay respects and watch her, at rest finally, drying out, her slowly disintegrating bones sifting their molecular infrastructures back to the origin of all things.
Besides, it'd be much cheaper.
Matthew Daniel Stremba
Baltimore
Don't Give Up
Recently, the big story was the closing of Catholic parishes. Then we read that Baltimore's population is dwindling.
Michael Olesker asks the last one out to turn off the lights (column, Feb. 12).
I would like to speak for the sectors of the city that continue to thrive: the neighborhoods.
My children play in the back yard, in the alley and in our neighbors' yards. Sometimes our back door is filled with children asking for water; other times I wonder where my son is.
We look out for all of our children. My neighbor wants to organize a block picnic for the kids. There seems to be a sense of community and organization. These are values that are important to us and necessary to transmit to our children.
I don't want to give up and turn off the lights. I believe we need to pull together to make our city a community.
Yes, we need to eliminate problems that break and injure our spirit. We need to create a safe and secure environment for our children and ourselves. Children have a right to feel safe at home, in their community and at school.
We need to believe in our ability to change and better our situation. The myth of "the county" is not always better. Drugs and violence are a growing part of post-industrial society, and these problems will not disappear unless we are willing to confront their causes.
I moved to the city recently after living many years in South America. I came back to the place where I was born not to loll in my roots but to find a piece of promise.
The cultural diversity in Baltimore can either be a point of conflict or a treasure in teaching tolerance.
As a city teacher I come into contact with many of the problems that face any urban area today.
However, I hope to transmit to my students a message contrary to the turn-out-the-lights-and-run group; I want to say "believe in your city, in your community, in your power to create. In unity there is strength."
No, we do not want to leave the city to the corner dealers and the Roland Park power families. The city belongs to the people; it is a city rich in history and filled with possibilities for the future.
Let us not turn out the lights and run from difficulty. Baltimore is a city worth believing in. In the words of a Uruguayan author, "We are what we can do to change who we are."
William R. Brown
Baltimore
Job for Angelos
If Peter Angelos really wants to help Baltimore, why doesn't ZTC he give up this futile football thing and buy the Maryland Institute's Lucas Collection?
Lando Jackson
Baltimore
Singapore II
Remember when the young American was caned in Singapore for the offense of their local laws on vandalism? Well, so many of us said "good." We wanted that to be the way things are handled here.
Now comes a story out of that same Singapore that tells us that a college professor has been fined by that government $6,900 and his newspaper editor $3,450. The publisher, the newspaper itself and the printer were also fined for criticizing Singapore judges in print.
Authoritarian governments do that sort of thing. You see, their major concern is preserving order. Freedom must be sacrificed.
How many of us would accept caning for acts of vandalism as the emblem of our punishment system and also not be able to criticize our public officials in print?
Freedom can never survive if order is the major preoccupation of the law.
Mel Mintz
Baltimore
Sacrificing the Past for the Future
As a faculty member of the Maryland Institute College of Art, I would like to add my voice to the discussion centered on the proposed sale of the Lucas Collection.
While much has been written about the effect this sale would have on the two major museums in Baltimore, little has been said of the institute's role and its ability to remain a viable and vital force in the art world, locally, nationally and internationally. The essential issue is the differing missions of the bodies in 'u contention.
The two museums are curatorial centers. They safeguard the past, keeping the evidence of our culture intact so that present and future generations can be inspired. They also collect and exhibit the work of contemporary art makers.
The Maryland Institute's mission is to educate future artists so the museums will continue to have something to collect. There is a wonderful symbiosis there.
In order for the institute to do its job, it must be able to react to the changing needs of the students and the changing nature of the art making process.
No longer are young artists content to sit in front of an easel and paint.
They want to explore the interaction of sound, light, motion, documentation, performance, installation, digital imaging, interactive computer based events, video -- all the things they read about in the literature and criticism of the
contemporary art world.
The technological genie is out of the bottle everywhere, for artists too. I don't blame students for being fascinated. I am, as well. I also know how expensive these new materials are.
In order for the institute to respond to these needs with viable programmatic changes and not just frustrate students with inadequate stopgap ruses, it needs money. Yes, crass as it is, money is the answer here.
The tuition well to which private schools have gone in the past is very near being dipped dry.
Tuitions have been raised to the point where we are in danger of pricing out all but the very richest students in the pool.
The most interesting people are often least able to pay and, therefore, student aid takes more and more of the college budget every year. Even so, I for one want to teach at a school that is populated by talented kids, not just wealthy ones.
Schools with larger endowments are able to offer more aid to the best students as well as add to their technology base, thus increasing their critical mass of talent. We have to be able to compete in that market. Continuing to increase tuition just won't work any more.
Schools cannot look to the government for extra funds. Anyone who reads the newspaper knows which way that particular wind isblowing.
Our trustees and generous supporters are in the same boat as those of the museums and, in fact, are often the same people. They are besieged by requests from all sides.
The necessary funds are not there, either. Part of the answer lies in a school being able to increase its endowment so that the interest earned will allow the school to reinvest in its infrastructure; to buy computers, video editing suites, 3-D drawing programs for sculptors, pressure-sensitive pens so painters can explore the new mediums, as well as new easels.
Without the ability, we will not be able to compete with other schools which are rapidly responding to the exciting movements taking place in the art world. We will cease to attract and retain the "best and the brightest."
The loss of the Lucas collection to the local museums is not something I, as an art teacher and artist, am excited about.
However, the Maryland Institute has an important job to do. We need to offer the best possible education we can.
If I must make a painful choice, I want to put our investment in the future of art, not in its past.
Paul Kohl
Baltimore
The writer chairs the photography department at the Maryland Institute.