Foster Care Can Work
I am writing in response to “A Daughter Who Deserves Choices” by John Sugg (Feb. 23). While the underpinnings of this article were more about politics than child welfare, I was disappointed of his categorization of the foster care system for children as “often lethal.” Mr. Sugg further alleged that “the state doesn’t care” and that “medical problems often go unnoticed and untreated.”
I would challenge Mr. Sugg to study the outcomes and results of the foster care system in more depth. In NC, there are some 10,000 children in care; in Mecklenburg County, there are approximately 1,000 children in out of home care due to child abuse and/or neglect. While the system is far from a perfect one, there are children and families who find success that they would not have otherwise experienced. Our agency alone is sponsoring six children who “aged out” of foster care and are currently in college.
There are children whose medical and emotional needs are finally being met only because they are in caring and loving foster homes. Stereotyping a system that cares for children as Mr. Sugg did woefully misrepresents that system to the public and unfairly dooms children and families to lackluster futures. That is simply unfair — and is wrong.
— Frank H. Crawford, Jr., Executive Director, Youth Homes Inc., Charlotte
Mystic Creative Parasites
If the creative class is the same class that perennially demands redistribution of wealth and destruction of property rights to advance its own personal visions of utopia upon everyone (willing and unwilling), this is not creative at all! This is intellectual laziness and capitulation. This is the whiny class, and it transcends generational boundaries. If retention of my individual freedoms means the creative class will shun Charlotte, I can accept that.
Creation of a particular quality of life, or economic outcomes and development, are not government functions; protecting an individual from greedy mystic/collectivist parasites of any stripe is. It’s the role of government to stay the hell out of the way of people who actually implement ideas, rather than just sit back and list what they want done for them. This derives from individual freedom, is elemental, and doesn’t change from generation to generation. I don’t know if this is liberal or conservative, I don’t know if it’s American or European, but this is reality.
Whatever happened to the DIY ethos of punk that presumably much of the creative class identifies with?
— Derrick Gilliland, Charlotte
More Personal Essays
I thoroughly enjoyed the article by Samantha Gellar (“Thousand Dollar Baby,” Feb. 23). As someone who also boxed in college, although not in Toughman competitions (I was too big a wuss for that), I agree that the sport can be a buffer between yourself and academic politics B.S. The concentration needed to box well shuts out everything else, kind of like meditation, believe it or not. Anyhow, I also liked Ms. Gellar’s writing style, not just the subject matter, and hope you will include more personal essays like this in the future.
— Pauley M. Jacobs, Charlotte
CL Wants To Deny Choices
In response to the article about women not having access to “EC’s” (“It’s Not Bad Enough to Be Raped,” by Sam Boykin, Mar. 2) there is a difference between birth control & Map (Morning-After Pill.) The Morning-After Pill that CL refers to as an EC, does in fact cause an end to a pregnancy by failing to let a fertilized fetus implant into the womb.
Being a pro-choice paper, CL doesn’t want women to know this because they might choose not to use Map, and CL is also against a hospital choosing what services they do or don’t provide. Not all hospitals do everything the same. Not all doctors do everything the same. If you had to go to a different hospital to treat cancer or heart disease, would CL complain? No, because it happens all the time. But when it comes to abortion, apparently CL doesn’t want anyone who doesn’t support their view to have a choice.
— Kenny Houck, Pineville
Highbrow Apocalypse
In response to Tara Servatius’ March 2 column “Crash of the Titans”: Mozart and Brahms are disappearing. Shakespeare may be going back to the shelf for good. Are our cultural icons like the symphony, opera, ballet and theater going to disappear from our society?
Across the country, money and labor unions strikes are silencing the players of many symphony orchestras. The costs are skyrocketing and many of the angels of the past, providing financial support, are dying off. Charlotte Repertory Theatre ran out of benefactors.
Who goes to theater, symphonies and the opera? The older crowd. Schools try, but do little to perpetuate the education of classical masterpieces. Except in the major metropolitan areas, the day is coming when there will be little theater, no opera, ballet or symphonies. It’s an evolutionary thing. They apparently lost out to TV, professional sports, video games, CDs and the movies. Too bad, not only for the viewers, but the creators.
— H.A. Thompson, Charlotte
This article appears in Mar 9-15, 2005.
