Steve Taylor
Lake Oswego, Ore.
Before the silicon invasion crowded out all the available orchard and farmlands, the area was well known for its apricots, prunes, pears and other fruit. It is now Death Valley, as evidenced by the congestion, pollution and population density that kill the spirits of its residents.
Chesta E. Bauer
Salem, Ore.
Your cover story doesn’t mention that key elements in the Bush White House ignored Enron’s role in the California energy crisis last summer, thereby risking delay in a Silicon Valley recovery. It doesn’t matter whether the Bush politicos were delivering a quid pro quo to Enron campaign contributors or harsh payback for California’s failure to vote for Bush in 2000. You don’t risk killing the goose that lays the golden egg over a political snit or a few campaign dollars, and the Bush White House did exactly that.
Tim Niles
Brooklyn Center, Minn.
Justice or Revenge?
As the NEWSWEEK article “A Crazy System” (Justice, March 25) correctly points out, the Texas statute on insanity is based on the 19th-century English law called the McNaghten rules. Apparently Texans are satisfied to have 19th-century justice applied in their courts. They don’t execute thieves for the theft of a loaf of bread or exile them to Australia, but they still condemn the insane to spend the rest of their lives in prison for criminal acts committed while they are clearly unable to control their behavior. Too bad Rusty and Andrea Yates didn’t buy a home in a state where mentally ill defendants have a chance of receiving treatment for their illness rather than spending 40 years in a state prison. This is revenge, not justice.
Mary Harada
West Newbury, Mass.
As the mother of a mentally ill son who has experienced the same psychosis and delusional states of schizophrenia as Andrea Yates and came close to killing his grandmother (my mother), I know the difference between being guilty of murder and being not guilty by reason of insanity. Unfortunately, people in this country and elsewhere are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to understanding and dealing with mental illness. Until it is treated as a disease of the brain, just as cancer is a disease of the body, we will not make progress in preventing horrendous acts like those Andrea Yates committed against her children while in an obviously delusional and psychotic state. She and others like her who have committed such terrible acts should be locked away for life in a psychiatric facility and treated and studied so that we can learn why this happens and how to prevent it in the future. The Yates verdict is a triumph of ignorance and not caring about the future of mental health and the mentally ill in this country.
Jonell Belke
Coppell, Texas
Texan Andrea Yates methodically, relentlessly, tortured her five children until they were dead. Imagine, if you will, the confused terror of the ones who realized what was about to happen to them. This woman is just another monster created by the insanity of blind adherence to religion, and she won’t be the last.
Roger Steed
Dayton, Ohio
Kids in the Hall-Your Hall
Thank you so much for your article “Bringing Up Adultolescents” (Family, March 25). Peg Tyre hit the nail right on the head! I am a 23-year-old social-work graduate student who left home for the first time and relocated to Manhattan less than a year ago. Although I live alone and take care of myself, I am still financially and emotionally very dependent on my parents. I literally would not be here today without their continued guidance and financial support. I’ve often questioned exactly what stage of life I am in and have felt uncomfortable about not being the self-sufficient person that both of my parents were when they were my age. I am clearly not an adolescent, but I don’t feel like an adult because I still depend so much on my parents. It was good to know that I’m not the only young person in limbo between adolescence and adulthood, and I feel much better knowing that there is a name for this important part of my life.
Rebekah L. Gordy
New York, N.Y.
Adultolescents or spoiled brats? I was disgusted to read about this “Mini-Me Generation,” whose members seem to believe they have an inherent right to go out to dinner with their friends, drive sports cars and live frivolously on their parents’ payroll. For all the adultolescents who read the NEWSWEEK story and find vindication, I have news: returning home to live with your parents does have a stigma. Part of being an adult means being self-sufficient. Learn to live within your means, be your own man or woman and start your life like the rest of society by paying your dues, working hard and earning your own way. No one owes you anything. Get a grip and grow up.
Esteban L. Diaz
Harrisburg, Pa.
Your March 25 issue contains an interesting juxtaposition: the article on adultolescents living at home until they’re 34 is followed by a story about how no one’s doing housework anymore. Why? Because they want to spend more time with their kids, who grow up fast and then leave. But the kids aren’t gone! They’re in their bedrooms buried under piles of clutter. I say, put these adultolescents to work cleaning the house and solve two national problems very quickly–houses will get cleaned after 20 years of neglect, and the “kids” will hate doing the cleaning so much that they’ll finally move out.
Dean Athans
Winfield, Ill.
Is Dropping ‘One Drop’ Enough?
George Will gets a little carried away when he says the “one drop” rule (which classified as black anyone with a drop of black blood) was the “most pernicious” idea ever to gain acceptance in this country (“Dropping the ‘One Drop’ Rule,” The Last Word, March 25). There have been a lot worse ideas: slavery, segregation and miscegenation laws come to mind. Today historians are examining whether the one-drop rule was any worse than the alternative systems of racial classification. One reason South Africa’s government divided “coloureds” and blacks into separate groups was to stop them from joining together to fight apartheid. In the United States, the one-drop rule did not have this divisive effect. On the contrary, it helped to unify all African-Americans–including those with white ancestors, like Colin Powell–in the struggle against racism. While Will is correct that there has been great progress toward ending racism, I wonder whether we’re close enough to that goal that we can, as he suggests, stop keeping score.
Christine B. Hickman
San Diego, Calif.
Right on, George Will. The “one drop” rule is indeed horribly pernicious, and the current blending of races is a blessing that may be the only way out of our centuries-long national nightmare of troubled race relations. I certainly don’t want to be stereotyped, so why should I accept it for anyone else? I have refused to fill in those “race” boxes on forms for 30 years. It’s long past time to get rid of them.
Margaret Plotkin
Philadelphia, Pa.
Dropping the one-drop rule is a reasonable proposal, but it won’t accomplish the goal of a colorblind, just society with equality of opportunity for all. We need to continue to classify people by location, religion, economics, gender, race and age to monitor our society in order to establish a more or less level playing field. Even if we achieve that, we’ll still need to keep monitoring to prevent the re-emergence of injustice and unequal opportunity. It’s naive to think it is the one-drop rule that protects racism and that its elimination would be the end of this blight on civilization.
Jerry Frankel
Plano, Texas
Making Final Plans
Ellen Ficklen’s parents did her a huge favor when they included her in making their funeral plans (“An Unexpected Kind of Family Foresight,” My Turn, March 25). For years before his death, my father would routinely take me through his financial documents and will every time I visited him in California. An extremely well-organized businessman, he would bring out what seemed to be his prized possession: a reference book that included annotations of everything from the pallbearers he wanted at his funeral to the names of his lawyers and accountants. Little did my sister and I realize the value of “the book” until he died of colon cancer a few years ago. His attention to detail all those years resulted in a step-by-step guide to managing the business of his death, and allowed us to grieve with a minimum of worry. We appreciate his final gift, and are doing the same thing for our own families.
Lee A. Davies
New York, N.Y.
Congratulations to Ellen Ficklen, not only for such a well-written article, but also for the courage she displayed in accepting the gift that her parents offered. My own father attempted to do much the same thing a year before his death, but I quickly changed the subject every time he brought it up. Because I avoided the whole painful topic, I will never know if the yellow blanket of flowers, the navy blue casket or even his final resting place were what he had in mind.
Jennifer C. Laird
Birmingham, Ala.
