Under 12/Under Arrest, Dec. 17.
Reporter Curtis Krueger did a nice, if incomplete, job of collecting the facts on kids going to the slammer for misbehaving in school. Yes indeed, "What are the alternatives?"
In his supplementary piece (Focus on prevention will work, experts say, Dec. 18) he gives us another puff of liberal smoke: more of the same that brought us to where we are.
Many of us Neanderthals over the age of 60 have fond memories of the Golden Age of the Paddle. As I recall, it was in the fifth grade that I had my first -- and last -- rendezvous with Miss Dempsey and her 24-inch "attention-getter." A half dozen 1-inch holes drilled through the working end ensured no trapped air softened her five firm blows to my tender, young bottom.
Can't remember the deed that necessitated my one-on-one session with Miss Dempsey, but I've no doubt it justified her attention. Justice came swiftly. I was out to the hall, paddled, once again told the rules and back in my seat in about the time it took to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
The hurt lasted but a few minutes -- the shame remained for years to come. In those days carting off kids to the local lock-up was not only unheard of -- it was undreamed of.
Ah, but we now live in an age when self-esteem rules. An age when everyone is a victim of one thing or another. Our learned therapists cook up marvelous new theories with each passing year. They seek to explain all, but in the end they settle nothing.
Tucked away at the end of the Sunday report was a small graph entitled Different treatment for different races? There's no need to repeat the numbers here. Most readers can guess how they fall.
As your paper never ceases to remind us, a disproportionate number of blacks are in the adult lock-ups of this country. It comes as no surprise then that a disproportionate number of black kids are being hauled off from their classrooms in cuffs. Bill Maxwell & Co., of course, will see in this the phantom hand of white "racism" at work. Victims all. Dear old Miss Dempsey wouldn't have bought a word of it.
Here then is the alternative Kruger fails to mention. I hated Miss Dempsey's class long before her paddle fell on my backside. I tolerated it after. I learned a thing or two at the hand of Miss Dempsey that focused my mind for years to come. If it worked for the insufferable brat that I was some 60 years ago, there's a pretty good chance it will work today. Imagine, a guaranteed solution that won't cost much more than a dime.
-- John R. Miley, Tampa
Big, phony "art'
Re: Big art, Dec. 17.
I see the phony art era I experienced in Southern California 40 years ago has arrived in Florida. There, on the campus of then-State College at Long Beach (now State University), I came upon a freestanding item I assumed was equipment of the city water department. But, no -- it was art, I learned.
Then a streak of lightning painted on the building where we entered, in taxi-cab black and yellow, was also art. There was some other garish monstrosity that I do not recall at the moment.
As to those on pages 5F and 10F, I would comment that a four-poster bed out of doors defiles nature. The big yellow Smile is garish and ugly. The Eclipse 2000, concrete and painted steel, is also ugly, unfriendly and defiles nature, which Florida can no longer afford to do, especially since every bush and tree has been torn out for "development" (which I call destruction).
It is difficult enough dealing with a declining Western civilization without these added touches of sadism in what is called art. "Be amused" by it, suggests your article. I would go home with a headache if I strolled around this horror in Sarasota.
Please spare us further horror stories.
-- Molly Gill, Largo
A beautiful story
Once in a blue moon, someone will take pen in hand and produce a masterpiece.
If you read the Dec. 17 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, you may be one among a torrent of readers who will swamp the Times with praise for a brief, true story of extraordinary beauty.
On page 1 of the Floridian section of the paper, a story titled A love song begins. The Times identifies the author as Marina Brown, a registered nurse and a case manager at the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast.
The column, featured as the Sunday Journal, welcomes freelance submissions as a forum for narrative storytelling. It is a wonderful idea and, in the case of Marina Brown and A love song, the Times has struck gold.
May I suggest you reprint this once a year?
-- Nelson L. Aters, St. Petersburg
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