Letters to the Editor

(From the August 22, 2003 issue of The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana.)
 
Demonstration planned
 
To the editor:

The story at the top of your August 18 front page, about planning for an anti-protest protest, has inspired me to convene Bloomington's ultimate assembly. I am calling it "The Demonstration to End All Demonstrations."

This wholly peaceful event will begin on the south lawn of the Monroe County Courthouse at precisely 12:01 a.m. on Monday, January 26, 2004, and last indefinitely -- perhaps permanently. Participation will require absolutely no effort. All you have to do is not show up. Thus, I expect a thorough-going display of community solidarity.

I am assured that no permit or acknowledgment is required since nothing will happen. (For added insurance, I have selected the assembly moment because, with a new moon upon us, it should be pitch dark and, very likely, icy.)

I must trust your readers to do their part, since, obviously, I myself will not be there to take attendance. And please, no news coverage.

Bruce Gregory Temple
Nashville

(From the May 19, 2003 issue of The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana.)
 
Revamp education
 
To the editor:

Your community columnist, Julia Copeland, with her suggestion that school homework may be "madness," provided this basis for a modest proposal:

The millennium insists we completely revamp public education and our thinking about it. The computer has already eliminated the need for 'rithmetic and, through voice-recognition and -generation, will soon antiquate reading and 'riting. Also, with our understanding of the human psyche, it should be clear the old ABC-type comparative evaluation is judgmental, aggressive and counter-productive, not to mention stressful.

Post 3-Rs, it is time for a new education alphabet. I modestly propose we retain the acronym ABC, but redefine it, and the purpose of education, to represent: Adjustment of Behavior for Contentment. (No, not "content" -- "contentment".)

As the television networks have recently demonstrated, we must recognize our new reality. Clearly, any need for old-fashioned enterprise and accountability -- and their handmaiden, hard work on-the-job and at-home -- has disappeared. And, with the advent of the world economy, the Information Age and the coming $2.47 global minimum wage, most of us will not actually be needed in the workforce.

Our challenge will be to fill the void with the ultimate drive-through reality, convenience. For a next step, we can simply abolish not only grades, but all pretentious graduation certification and, as an entitlement, issue each newborn an L.S.D. (Leisure Studies Doctorate).

Should a democracy settle for a lesser common denominator? A brave new world, indeed. And, with just the right amount of sedation, we can be people in it.

Bruce Gregory Temple
Nashville

(From the December 26, 2002 issue of The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana.)
 
Vote for Lockridge
 
To the editor:

As a former playmate and school-mate of the offspring of Ross Lockridge Jr., I herewith appoint myself founder and chair of the Committeee to Elect Ross Lockridge Jr. (to the Monroe County Hall of Fame.)

Monroe Countians, native and new, pay tribute to your county and yourselves. Do justice to the literary legacy of county son Lockridge. Acknowledge, as many others have, that Raintree County ranks right up there with Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick as being a great American novel.

Do not be deceived. Although he seemed to be -- and was -- just one of our Stull Avenue neighbors, Mr. Lockridge authored the world a gift for all times. Monroe County has seen and will see few of his national stature. With no offense intended, all but a few of our Hall of Famers are, in comparison to Ross Lockridge Jr., merely footnotes in an obscure chapter.

Please do the right thing. Clip your Monroe County Hall of Fame ballot from the H-T, place a mark beside the name of Ross Lockridge Jr.. and dispatch the ballot to this newspaper. While there's still time.

Bruce Gregory Temple
Nashville

(From the June 24, 2001 issue of The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana.)
 
Wondering
 
To the editor:

Some of us in Tracy McNeely's tree-graced former home -- Brown County -- have been wondering:

If the slammer was the destiny-of-choice for such civil disobediants as Martin Luther, Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., why not The Dolphin?

Give the girl a break. Bust her and jail her. And her mommy, too, if daughter and mother want to hang together.

Every night one of the Ladies McNeely spends in that tree gives unchecked development a better name. They could accomplish so much more as squatting, overnight guests of not just Bill C. Brown, but of all the taxpayers.

Also, Yellowwood Forest over here would be safe.

Bruce Gregory Temple
Nashville

In praise of doctor
 
To the editor:

In the late Fifties, my family moved to the then-far-east side of Bloomington. Early on, I noticed noontime classical sonatas wafting out of a neighbor house and across the street to our place. "That doctor comes home for lunch and plays the piano," my mother explained, adding, "He's gotta be an oddball."

A few years later, I chose neighbor and internist Bill Holtzman as my family doctor. Over more than three decades, we met annually for him to listen to my chest and hear about my life. Not this year. Without consulting me, Holtzman up and retired the end of June after 53 years of listening to chests and examining lives.

During one office visit nearly 15 years ago, I let slip that the tips of my fingers sometimes tingled when I exercised. My doctor looked up from his notes. A couple of weeks and one old coot of a cardiologist later, my chest sported a foot-long, vertical scar and part of the big blood vessel from my left leg now lived, in pieces, next to my heart.

A few years later, Holtzman, after referring himself to the same mad-scientist cardiologist, underwent the same surgery. In his office last year, we briefly discussed the aftermaths of our coronary-artery-bypass frolics. About modern medicine, the digitizing of which gave him pause, Bill conceded, with typical pith: "We'd both be dead without it."

More specifically, I'd be dead but for Paul W. Holtzman's longtime bird-dogging attention, interest and caring. I suspect many other H-T readers can say the same.

This is no invitation to telemarketers, but what am I supposed to do now? They aren't making Bill Holtzmans any more.

Bruce Gregory Temple
Nashville

Columns praised
 
To the editor:

Thanks to The Herald-Times for publishing on your opinion pages, last summer and again October 18, the writings of Irina Petrosian, a former Russian journalist and current Indiana University graduate student.

Ms. Petrosian's expressions stand as a strong lesson and model to most of us, for whom American English is our native tongue and "(like) you know" our most-relied-upon substitute for effective communication.

We dumb-talkers need a periodic Joseph Conrad to learn our language and then teach us, by example, how to use it. Ms. Petrosian follows in that worthy tradition.

What's more, she thinks before she writes, thus offering up another crucial lesson. A great teacher once chastised me: "The reason you seem to be having so much trouble expressing what's on your mind is that there seems to be nothing on your mind worth expressing." I thought a little about what he said, and he was right.

I don't agree with all of Ms. Petrosian's points of view, but I think, thanks to her writing craftsmanship, I understand them. Reading their clear presentation in The H-T has challenged me to think and has added to my life.

Bruce Gregory Temple
Nashville

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