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Sarah Palin’s role model
Re “Sarah Palin’s role model,” by Steve Cohen—
As an 82-year-old grandmother, I think Sarah persona is far more threatening than that of Nixon’s ever was. It took us a while to realize how dishonest Nixon really was.
I just have one question to ask those who contemplate voting for her: Do you really want Sarah Palin to be the one who answers the red phone at 3:a.m.?
Judith Ingram
Newtown Square, Pa.
September 11, 2008
Cohen’s phrase, "anti-Establishment, anti-intellectual bias," is presumptive.
Animus toward (self-appointed) intellectuals and the establishment is more than just bias. Intellectuals, the establishment and the government have acted against the interests of the majority of the American people for the past 40 years of my political maturity, and probably a lot longer than that.
Every war Americans have fought for the past 150 years has been on foreign soil. America subsidizes the breakup of the family; has opened its borders to foreigners who hate us; taxes initiative; and hates the religious faith of the majority of its citizens.
That’s not a bias. It’s a realistic response to an entire class of people who hate us. Harvard-educated lawyers are getting what they deserve from Sarah Palin, and we are cheering her on.
Tom Blair
Perkiomenville, Pa.
September 10, 2008
Editor’s comment: Your contention that the U.S. government is run by intellectuals will, I suspect, come as a surprise to most intellectuals— or, at least, those too young to remember Thomas Jefferson’s administration.
Piano teacher’s quandary
Reading Maria Thompson Corley’s piece about the dilemma she faced in passing on her love for the piano to her daughter (“My daughter, myself”), I could not help but recall my own experience in quitting piano lessons when I was young, a silly thing I’ve regretted ever since.
Her piece also brought to mind my experience in passing my own love for the stage on to my children. There was a time that each of them, in their early adolescence, really resisted participating with me in whatever theatrical endeavor in which I attempted to engage them. Like Corley, I was flabbergasted until I realized that I had to let them learn to love what I loved for them, not for me.
Every parent must discover how to let go as one’s child matures. What a joy, then, when that young person, no longer a child, willingly comes to love as well one’s own favorite loves.
Craig R. Tavani
Facetime Performing Arts Studio
Phoenixville, Pa.
September 3, 2008
I read with great interest Maria Thompson Corley’s article about her daughter’s interest/lack of in the piano. My husband and I are professional actors. Our oldest is a theater major at the University of Maryland. Very early on, we turned her over to professionals to learn how to sing properly. We could teach her anything she needed to know, but the tension and uncertainty it would create would not be worth it. I love to hear about her teachers at UMD, as I know some of them professionally. But I know she is discussing all of this to her mom, not her peer.
Backing off has been one of the great parenting lessons I have learned with creative, passionate kids.
Brenna McDonough
Bowie, Md.
September 3, 2008
I’ve heard this story before. A parent or a sibling is not a teacher. A teen needs a non-parental mentor in his or her life. Parents provide education in many ways but not in artificial lesson situations.
Parental music lessons are a perfect excuse for teens’ natural tendency to rebel. We had the same issue in my family: Music lessons always ended in screams and tears and slammed doors. Even though we have music teachers in our house, we hired music teachers to do the job. Now we are reaping the fruits: We often play chamber music after dinner and often play gigs together.
Beeri Moalem
Palo Alto, Calif.
September 1, 2008
Maria Corley replies: Wow! I’m the only one who didn’t get the memo! How come my mother could do it? My grandmother? All those women in my hometown? Is it generational? Or maybe it’s regional? Canadians are actually slightly different than Americans, in ways that are often hard to describe. Anyway, all’s well that ends well.
Palin and broken promises
“Broken Promises,” by Reed Stevens, provides brilliant, sometimes glaring insight into our "American" pop culture’s newest trend: teenagers having babies out of wedlock. Wonderful for discussion groups; stirring, disturbing, guaranteed to arouse a response.
Margot Harrison
Hendersonville, N.C.
September 4, 2008
Fascists behaving badly
Re “Fascists behaving badly,” by Andrew Mangravite—
A fine definition of fascist behavior is offered here, conjuring up images of Dick Cheney as Yeats’s beast in The Second Coming, stomping into Washington and declaring himself a separate branch of the government.
Rick Soisson
East Falls
September 3, 2008
Hey, man, thanks for this. And, I’ll drink a toast to those who didn’t get out of Russia or Germany. My family had the good luck to get out (via Latvia and Bessarabia).
Imagine what memories Gustav Klimpt (and the others) carried in their minds.
Ed Baker
Takoma Park, Md.
September 6, 2008
For art’s sake, move the Barnes
Richard R. Feudale ("For Art’s Sake, Move the Barnes— to the Art Museum’s Campus“) reveals himself as the mirror image of the diehard "Friends of the Barnes." The latter cannot imagine a future that doesn’t preserve exactly the past (see my April 2006 posting, "Moving the Barnes: No Hobson’s Choice"); Feudale can’t imagine a future that’s not completely unencumbered by the past.
Feudale writes as though Albert Barnes never wrote a will nor established a foundation to accomplish specific objectives. As I have argued in several postings, I do not believe that either Barnes’s will or the most important of his foundation’s objectives preclude the relocation of his collection to the Parkway. This argument in no way opens the door to dismissing the centrality of Barnes’s specific educational program for his intended audience or to dismantling his idiosyncratic hanging of paintings, which he viewed as an essential teaching tool.
While the future is not totally the captive of the past, the latter does hold some claim on the former. The will of Albert Barnes deserves a respectful reading and interpretation in light of changing circumstances. It does not merit being cast aside so that Feudale’s educational mission, rather than that of Dr. Barnes, can be accomplished.
Gresham Riley
Old City
August 27, 2008
Editor’s note: The writer was formerly president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
The premise of the Feudale article is nonsense. Carried to its logical conclusion, let’s put all of the art in one place, and since most of it came from France, Paris makes more sense as a venue than Philadelphia.
Why should Philadelphia be rewarded with a collection that was the last place on earth Barnes would have wanted it? The Barnes collection stands alone in the world as a teaching collection assembled specifically for that purpose. What possible benefit could there be to diluting this masterwork with the Art Museum’s collection, which has no rhyme or reason other than as an assemblage of whatever got left to it at the time?
If you want an argument to add some tourist draws to the cavern on the Parkway, why not pilfer Walter Annenberg’s collection from the Met? After all, much of the money that went into it came out of Philadelphia pockets.
Nick Tinari
Broomall, Pa.
August 27, 2008
To presume that you understand what Dr. Barnes would have said to this notion is beyond absurd. The reason that his collection is so removed from the Art Museum is clearly described in two Books: Art and Argyrol and Triumph on Fairmount. These explain part of the logic behind the separation of the two collections.
Karen Saler
Center City
August 27, 2008
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