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Live From The Glen Hotel

I've been reading back issues and came across your stories on ads in schools. My kids went to Orca and Summit K-12. Orca came from a bunch of us "alternative" types getting together and breaking away from John B. Allen School in the Phinney Ridge area. We had to fight the SPSD every step of the way. The children chose the name "Orca" for the school. Alternative School 1 and NOVA came later.

I'm gonna have to go out to Orca, see what they've done to resist this advertising trend. This stuff is really sick. This must be where the sheep and goats get separated. Goats are big in Seattle this year...it's said that they never have digestive upsets. My nickname was "Nanny" when I was a child, and my brother's name was Billy...My children are grown; I have grandchildren. I can still kick butt.

I don't know that bucking the system so my kids could have the benefit of an open-concept education/learning environment made a difference; for the better, I mean. One daughter is married to her TV and recently joined the Catholic Church. They didn't watch TV as kids; we did art stuff, they wrote plays, became actors and authors at an early age.

So, what is it? 10% of us have minds of our own and the rest of America shares a brain?

It's not that people are so stupid, per se...they just haven't much built-in resistance to neurolinguistic programming techniques. Sports advertising has certainly had its way with the homeless...warmup suits, $300 jackets. Really ugly shit, too. To my eyes, anyhow.

--Lilith Lightfield, The Glen Hotel Apts., Seattle

Apples and Orangutangs

The Supreme Court recently voted on a 5 to 4 majority that people do not have the right to be assisted in self-inflicted death.

This ruling appears to conflict with Roe v. Wade. If a woman's body is protected as private by law in matters of childbirth, then why is it not in choice of death? If someone cannot request assistance in the dying process, could the same arguments be used in cases where a woman requests assistance in aborting a child? It may then be argued that she has the right to an abortion, but not the right to have someone assist her with it. Meaning, if she wants an abortion, she has to do it herself, without anyone's help. The right to die issue appears to parallel Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court saddens me. Basically, the decisions I disagree with generally pass on a 5-4 vote. The Supreme Court is like playing with a stacked deck. It is the Reagan/Bush appointees that are the issues--Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas who seem to lack human understanding and compassion and basic social understanding, as well as insight into the Constitution itself.

Another of the more recent disturbing decisions is the right of a State to incarcerate someone after his sentence is up. Basically they can now declare a person mentally incompetent and keep him in the slammer as long as they wish. But the decision is based on the type of crime originally committed, and not necessarily on the person's emotional state. The ruling conflicts with a person's right to make restitution for his mistakes. Once a person had served his time, he had the right to start fresh in a new life, with his past behind him. But no more.

--traveler@serv.net