Letters: Pope Pill

Yours Truly did a Letters Page illustration yesterday. It's about the Catholic Church and the Pill:



I actually wanted to do something more like this one (below), but we ran into some problems depicting a crucifix. That may work with some clients, but the Times is very conscious about offending people, so it didn't fly. I had about an hour to do the sketches, and another hour to do the final.

Letters: Wiffle Ball

Hey, Grown-Ups, Let the Kids Play Wiffle Ball!

[These letters reference a story about a group of kids in Connecticut who built an elaborate Wiffle Ball field in their suburb. The neighbours didn't appreciate it and had the city dismantle it.]

To the Editor:


Re “Build a Wiffle Ball Field in Greenwich, and Lawyers Will Come” (Our Towns column, front page, July 10):

“We did it on our own,” 16-year-old Vincent Provenzano says in Peter Applebome’s column about a bunch of kids who caused controversy when they built an unauthorized version of Fenway Park in a vacant lot in Greenwich, Conn. “Maybe people think that’s unusual.”

It is, in fact, alarmingly unusual. Studies show that time for unprogrammed free play outdoors has declined in recent years. And many of us are asking how the next generation will have the imagination and initiative to solve the social and environmental problems they will face without such childhood play.

Don’t dismantle that Wiffle ball field. Instead, make time and space for unadulterated play in every neighborhood.

Edward Miller

Wellfleet, Mass., July 10, 2008

The writer is a founding member of the New York Coalition for Play and a director of Alliance for Childhood.

•

To the Editor:

As a teacher of college undergraduates — and as someone who grew up playing ball in every open space and against every blank wall in my Westchester County hometown — I was more than a little cranky after reading Peter Applebome’s column.

Parents: Forget about improving SAT scores. Please give me more students who are imaginative and energetic enough to take this kind of initiative.

It is great for kids to “color outside the lines.” That is where intellectual, commercial and artistic innovation originates. These kids should be encouraged by being left alone.

Isn’t there something wrong with a society that automatically invokes the phrase “too good to be true”? Are we that pessimistic about our lot in the world? These kids have a different perspective, one we should emulate.

Allen S. Miller

Charlottesville, Va., July 10, 2008

•

To the Editor:

In addition to having lost our collective minds about kids having fun on their own, we have also forgotten our collective responsibility to society, which includes kids.

Do we, the village that is raising these kids, want them to go inside and play Grand Theft Auto (rated M, for mature, which means that content may include “intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language”) so we can have peace and quiet when we get home from work?

Or do we want these kids outside where we can observe them engaging in play that is creative, collaborative, physical and free? Christine Hall

Stamford, Conn., July 10, 2008

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To the Editor:

I support the Greenwich, Conn., teenagers who built the Wiffle ball field. Let them play! I’m just a few months removed from college, and already I miss those lazy summer afternoons playing sports outside. How wholesome are those memories!

Perhaps property value in this Greenwich neighborhood will decline, but in this present market, I doubt anyone is buying. And even if the field is a drainage pit, grass is everlasting and will always grow back. But these kids have only so much childhood left, and soon all they’ll have are memories.

Let them remember their field of dreams, thwacking pitches and running bases. Believe me, it’s much more fulfilling than killing aliens on Halo.

Timothy R. Smith

Alexandria, Va., July 10, 2008

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To the Editor:

In Greenwich, Conn., a town known for its teardowns and mini-mansions, I would think residents would prefer the sounds of kids playing Wiffle ball over the sound of jackhammers and construction crews. Susan Gilbert

Exeter, N.H., July 10, 2008

•

To the Editor:

To paraphrase a saying, a kid’s right to swing his Wiffle ball bat ends where the other guy’s Nice Overpriced Suburban Escape begins. Michael A. Salinger

Newton, Mass., July 10, 2008

Op-Ed: UFO

Unidentified Flying Threats
By NICK POPE

ON the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses?

A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States.

The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community.

Most of the incidents investigated in Britain have been easily explained as misidentifications of stars and planets, aircraft lights, satellites and meteors, but some cases have raised national security or air safety issues.

On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land. An examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base — a clear security breach.

On March 30 and 31, 1993, there was a wave of U.F.O. sightings over Britain. One witness described a triangular-shaped craft that flew slowly over an air force base before accelerating away to the horizon in an instant, many times faster than a jet. The British military reported, “There would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating over the U.K.”

On April 23, 2007, a commercial airline pilot and some of his passengers reported a huge cigar-shaped U.F.O. — the pilot estimated it to be a mile wide — near the Channel Islands. At the time, air traffic controllers reported to the pilot that radar picked up something, but that it was “unknown traffic.”

In addition, there have been several incidents of near misses between U.F.O.s and known aircraft — enough to prompt the Ministry of Defense and the British Civil Aviation Authority to advise pilots, if they encounter anything, “not to maneuver, other than to place the object astern, if possible.”

The United States is no less vulnerable than Britain and France to threats to security and air safety. The United States Air Force or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should reopen investigations of U.F.O. phenomena. It would not imply that the country has suddenly started believing in little green men. It would simply recognize the possibility that radar alone cannot always tell us what’s out there.

drugs

this is for the letters to the editor about a lack of drug treatment given to convicts. i didn't want to do something as literal as the example, so what do you think?

Example: Stuart Goldenberg

And here's one that went with the Ghostwriting article. By Stuart Goldenberg.

Example: Jon Krause

Here is a solution to the Slavery article. By Jon Krause.

Illustrators... in the NEWS!

I don't think I'd ever hear the name "Barry Blitt" on Entertainment Tonight. Not exactly "Brangelina", you know? But it's really interesting to see an editorial illustration arouse so much attention.

What are you guys' thoughts? Did he go too far in the satire? Or are people smart enough to get the commentary? Leave your musings in the comments.