Letters, 11/28: Photo was a poor choice
The Lincoln Journal Star’s “Nightlife” article on Friday, Nov. 18, in the Ground Zero was the perfect display of depravity. What a wonderful morning it was to see the lead-in with Harry Potter, the greatest kid magnet in the world, and then to witness four young men enjoying a joint, counting their cash and of course snorting a fine white powder off the coffee table.
I am truly amazed at the Journal Star’s choice of photos. I understand that this band is unique and provides a different musical experience, but give me a break, was this the only photo available? I seriously doubt it, and it was in poor choice.
What’s coming up in future editions of your twisted take on life? Will we see the handicapped mocked? Will the mentally challenged be paraded for all to see? Maybe we could see someone with a needle hanging out of an arm under a bridge; I would love to be able to share that experience with the children of our city.
Ground Zero will be the first part of the paper in the trash each Friday without reading from this point on. That is a great many advertisements that will no longer be seen in my household, and I would guess in a few others as well.
Kevin P. Carter, Lincoln
City up to its old tricks
Well, I see from reading the Lincoln Journal Star that the city of Lincoln is up to its old tricks again. It seems they are willing to pay once again a substantial premium over the assessed valuation for property they intend to purchase, about 50 percent more in this case for the property commonly called Courthouse Square on South Ninth Street.
I can’t understand how every property that the city buys can be so underassessed on the tax rolls, while the house that I have lived in for the past 17-plus years has consistently been valued at between 98-105 percent of actual valuation.
I think that one of two things needs to happen. Either A) the city of Lincoln needs to hire a different negotiator, or B) we need to get all the property in Lincoln at the right valuation. With the property taxes that we pay in this state being among the highest in the land, I for one don’t need to be subsidizing someone else’s underassessed property.
Mark S. Hahn, Lincoln
The Grinch comes early
For 10 years I volunteered my time with the Updowntowners, the event planning arm of the Downtown Lincoln Association. This group of amazing volunteers puts on such events as July Jamm, Celebrate Lincoln, the Star City Holiday Festival and the Downtown Lighting Ceremony. Combined, these events draw more than 100,000 people to the downtown area.
This holiday season, the city of Lincoln has made it cost prohibitive to produce the Downtown Lighting Ceremony due to the dramatic increase in the permits to close streets and hood parking meters. Additionally, as reported in the Nov. 17 Lincoln Journal Star, it will add an expense line of nearly $4,000 to the July Jamm event for these same permits.
Apparently, Mayor Coleen Seng and her administration lack the business and public relations understanding to envision the tremendous benefit these events reap for not only the downtown community, the city of Lincoln, but the entire region as well.
It’s a very sad commentary that we have to tell our friends, neighbors and children that there will be no Downtown Lighting Ceremony this year because the Grinch has come early to Lincoln. These same officials can easily spend at least $300,000 on a truck-mounted video camera to film where potholes and improvements are needed on city streets (something many of us are fully aware of already), but refuse to see the benefit of waiving a few hundred dollars in fees for a safe, pro-family, pro-neighborhood (downtown) event.
Shawn Traudt, Lincoln
Music coverage lacking
I read with some disappointment the small article on Sunday, Nov. 20, about the Nebraska Music Educators All-State musicians. The paper managed all of two short columns and really said very little about what actually happened during all the music making that occurred during the All-State music rehearsals and performances.
The Journal Star published many articles and pictures about the football playoffs and even some human interest stories such as the one in last Monday’s paper. However, one would think with approximately 800 high school musicians taking part in two and one-half days of rehearsals followed by performances in the Lied Center, that the Journal Star would take notice.
Of course, the paper did cover the singer who had to make a choice between football and All-State, but he knew ahead of time what the expectations and rules were. That conflict has never happened before as football playoffs were on a different weekend.
Where were the pictures of these hundreds of high school students working to prepare and create something of great beauty? Where were the interviews with visiting clinicians? Where was the coverage of the excellent concluding concerts in the Lied Center? It would seem to me that if 800 high school students are caught “doing something good,” it would be worth our paper’s coverage, but I guess not. It seems that a great opportunity was missed here.
Congratulations to all of these students who were chosen to participate. I know that the experience is one that you will cherish for a long time to come.
Carolee R. Curtright, Lincoln
Professor Emeritus, UNL School of Music
Extra info for column
This is an addendum to the “Homeroom Guest View” by Jane Holt in the Nov. 21 Lincoln Journal Star.
I am mother to one of the trio to whom Holt referred in her column. Indeed, the boys’ First Amendment rights were not the only rights being challenged. I am just thankful Richard Krause was at the helm in 1990 to assure that justice prevailed. Leaders of the National Republican Party were standing at the ready in case it did not.
It might be of interest to your readers to know that two of those young men are now successful lawyers and the third is a Shakespearean English professor at an out-of-state university. They remain friends, e-mail each other on a regular basis, and get together whenever possible.
Marilee Tucker, Lincoln
Let scientists do their job
Richard Terrell’s disingenuous response to Paul Fell’s cartoon (letter, Nov. 19) asserts Fell and “other panicked opponents of the intelligent-design movement” are concealing the fact that intelligent design’s principal proponents are to be found in academia.
Substantiation of that claim is made by identifying Lehigh’s Michael Behe as one of those individuals since Behe has hypothesized that because evolutionary theory cannot explain the existence of certain systems in nature, those systems must therefore be the result of an intelligent design.
What has apparently eluded the intellectual grasp of Behe — and of Terrell as well — is that those anomalous systems, like all other natural systems, are the consequence, to quote Darwin, of “millions of years of biological waste.”
That nature has never been tidy and that things get lost over time make the task of tracing origins difficult, if not impossible. But those realities of nature do not logically establish a basis for presuming an intelligent design.
Academics may very well have dreamed up this movement. But it does not take a whole lot of intelligence to understand how “church-based advocates” would be attracted to this new way of discussing the old subject of the superintending deity. That’s a bandwagon on which Terrell and others of his ilk apparently have reserved seating.
If parents want their children to be taught about designers or creators, religion, history and anthropology courses provide that opportunity. If parents want their children to learn scientific method — and especially the need to avoid the intellectual pitfall of founding their belief on a faulty premise — then they had better let the professionals in the science wings of our academic institutions do their job.
Liam O. Purdon, Lincoln
I am truly amazed at the Journal Star’s choice of photos. I understand that this band is unique and provides a different musical experience, but give me a break, was this the only photo available? I seriously doubt it, and it was in poor choice.
What’s coming up in future editions of your twisted take on life? Will we see the handicapped mocked? Will the mentally challenged be paraded for all to see? Maybe we could see someone with a needle hanging out of an arm under a bridge; I would love to be able to share that experience with the children of our city.
Ground Zero will be the first part of the paper in the trash each Friday without reading from this point on. That is a great many advertisements that will no longer be seen in my household, and I would guess in a few others as well.
Kevin P. Carter, Lincoln
City up to its old tricks
Well, I see from reading the Lincoln Journal Star that the city of Lincoln is up to its old tricks again. It seems they are willing to pay once again a substantial premium over the assessed valuation for property they intend to purchase, about 50 percent more in this case for the property commonly called Courthouse Square on South Ninth Street.
I can’t understand how every property that the city buys can be so underassessed on the tax rolls, while the house that I have lived in for the past 17-plus years has consistently been valued at between 98-105 percent of actual valuation.
I think that one of two things needs to happen. Either A) the city of Lincoln needs to hire a different negotiator, or B) we need to get all the property in Lincoln at the right valuation. With the property taxes that we pay in this state being among the highest in the land, I for one don’t need to be subsidizing someone else’s underassessed property.
Mark S. Hahn, Lincoln
The Grinch comes early
For 10 years I volunteered my time with the Updowntowners, the event planning arm of the Downtown Lincoln Association. This group of amazing volunteers puts on such events as July Jamm, Celebrate Lincoln, the Star City Holiday Festival and the Downtown Lighting Ceremony. Combined, these events draw more than 100,000 people to the downtown area.
This holiday season, the city of Lincoln has made it cost prohibitive to produce the Downtown Lighting Ceremony due to the dramatic increase in the permits to close streets and hood parking meters. Additionally, as reported in the Nov. 17 Lincoln Journal Star, it will add an expense line of nearly $4,000 to the July Jamm event for these same permits.
Apparently, Mayor Coleen Seng and her administration lack the business and public relations understanding to envision the tremendous benefit these events reap for not only the downtown community, the city of Lincoln, but the entire region as well.
It’s a very sad commentary that we have to tell our friends, neighbors and children that there will be no Downtown Lighting Ceremony this year because the Grinch has come early to Lincoln. These same officials can easily spend at least $300,000 on a truck-mounted video camera to film where potholes and improvements are needed on city streets (something many of us are fully aware of already), but refuse to see the benefit of waiving a few hundred dollars in fees for a safe, pro-family, pro-neighborhood (downtown) event.
Shawn Traudt, Lincoln
Music coverage lacking
I read with some disappointment the small article on Sunday, Nov. 20, about the Nebraska Music Educators All-State musicians. The paper managed all of two short columns and really said very little about what actually happened during all the music making that occurred during the All-State music rehearsals and performances.
The Journal Star published many articles and pictures about the football playoffs and even some human interest stories such as the one in last Monday’s paper. However, one would think with approximately 800 high school musicians taking part in two and one-half days of rehearsals followed by performances in the Lied Center, that the Journal Star would take notice.
Of course, the paper did cover the singer who had to make a choice between football and All-State, but he knew ahead of time what the expectations and rules were. That conflict has never happened before as football playoffs were on a different weekend.
Where were the pictures of these hundreds of high school students working to prepare and create something of great beauty? Where were the interviews with visiting clinicians? Where was the coverage of the excellent concluding concerts in the Lied Center? It would seem to me that if 800 high school students are caught “doing something good,” it would be worth our paper’s coverage, but I guess not. It seems that a great opportunity was missed here.
Congratulations to all of these students who were chosen to participate. I know that the experience is one that you will cherish for a long time to come.
Carolee R. Curtright, Lincoln
Professor Emeritus, UNL School of Music
Extra info for column
This is an addendum to the “Homeroom Guest View” by Jane Holt in the Nov. 21 Lincoln Journal Star.
I am mother to one of the trio to whom Holt referred in her column. Indeed, the boys’ First Amendment rights were not the only rights being challenged. I am just thankful Richard Krause was at the helm in 1990 to assure that justice prevailed. Leaders of the National Republican Party were standing at the ready in case it did not.
It might be of interest to your readers to know that two of those young men are now successful lawyers and the third is a Shakespearean English professor at an out-of-state university. They remain friends, e-mail each other on a regular basis, and get together whenever possible.
Marilee Tucker, Lincoln
Let scientists do their job
Richard Terrell’s disingenuous response to Paul Fell’s cartoon (letter, Nov. 19) asserts Fell and “other panicked opponents of the intelligent-design movement” are concealing the fact that intelligent design’s principal proponents are to be found in academia.
Substantiation of that claim is made by identifying Lehigh’s Michael Behe as one of those individuals since Behe has hypothesized that because evolutionary theory cannot explain the existence of certain systems in nature, those systems must therefore be the result of an intelligent design.
What has apparently eluded the intellectual grasp of Behe — and of Terrell as well — is that those anomalous systems, like all other natural systems, are the consequence, to quote Darwin, of “millions of years of biological waste.”
That nature has never been tidy and that things get lost over time make the task of tracing origins difficult, if not impossible. But those realities of nature do not logically establish a basis for presuming an intelligent design.
Academics may very well have dreamed up this movement. But it does not take a whole lot of intelligence to understand how “church-based advocates” would be attracted to this new way of discussing the old subject of the superintending deity. That’s a bandwagon on which Terrell and others of his ilk apparently have reserved seating.
If parents want their children to be taught about designers or creators, religion, history and anthropology courses provide that opportunity. If parents want their children to learn scientific method — and especially the need to avoid the intellectual pitfall of founding their belief on a faulty premise — then they had better let the professionals in the science wings of our academic institutions do their job.
Liam O. Purdon, Lincoln
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