Love Letters, hate mail

Trashy?

I would like to know what your reasoning is for putting a nude woman, with an apple in front of her, on the front page of Vol 21, No 43? What is the connection with how your garden grows?

I think it is very degrading and disguising. These papers are put in areas where there are children that can easily pick one up.

I have read very few of your papers, but the ones I have read I have enjoyed very much. Why would you want to degrade your paper by putting nudity on the front. I came very close to throwing every one of them in the trash at the establishment I was in.

Please keep your paper classy and enjoyable and not in the gutter.

Thank you,

--Cindy Dyer

Editor's Note: We're of the opinion that the human body is not disgusting. It can be used degradingly, but as our regular readers will know (smart folk, they), our cover was an homage to Botticelli's very famous painting of 1486, Birth of Venus, which no one in right mind would think disgusting. (By the way, her beautiful left nipple is wagging in the wind for all to see, unlike that of our Venus.) New birth ... nature ... spring ... garden. We think it works.

If you don't like the human form displayed, even artfully and tastefully, then keep your children out of the Uffizi -- that's for sure -- and every other repository of Western culture, because there are naked people everywhere.

As far as the apple ... maybe it has something to do with another famous woman in a garden.

And please -- don't trash. Recycle.

Blue Jeans or Pinstripes?

Dear UTW:

With Tulsa's low test-scoring McLain High School in danger of a state takeover, the northside needs a makeover.

There is no better person to lead that effort than McLain's most famous and successful graduate, Mike Turpen.

Turpen is a former Muskogee district attorney, Oklahoma Attorney General, author and TV star with offices in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

He is the perfect role model for a student body that badly needs one.

Turpen proved his mettle as a teacher by counseling Oklahoma City high school boys to learn the words and the value of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If."

So let's rename his alma mater, "Turpen High," and put the loquacious lawyer to work teaching a seminar for all freshman boys on "If" -- "If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And -- what is more, you'll be a Man, my son!"

Love always,

---Virginia Blue Jeans Jenner

Evil Is Evil

The Good Friday murders were definitely horrific and utterly evil in addition to being racially motivated.

But, this is not a clearly defined black on white crime as so much of the media tries to portray it.

The disturbed young man who victimized these innocent people on the basis of their skin color in retaliation for his fathers killing by a black man was a Native American. This detail does not lessen the evil committed against any of our citizens nevertheless it is a fact.

My point is this, evil is evil regardless of one's ethnicity. We should condemn everyone who assaults innocent people equally, without regard to skin color and let the chips fall wherever they may ...

--Buster Knott

Lessons Overlooked

The mayor promised he would work on providing jobs for the community. ... One can indeed see that as progress, for I doubt that the mayor during the time of the 21 riots would have said as much. But what I can't help but wonder about is how after the riot, the black community in a world with less opportunity, a world of more racism and hostility, managed to rebuild Greenwood and the Black Wallstreet to a point where it was better, grander and wealthier than it was before the riots? Like the mythical Phoenix rising from the terrible flames, the people of that time in that community did something incredible. How did they manage that and what lessons can we learn from that fantastic feat?

I suppose a lot of people look around that area today and see empty lots, remember that there was a riot and fire and assume that those empty lots are the result of the fire. Not true. Amazingly, they rebuilt that area. It's events that happened afterwards that truly decimated that part of town. That too holds important lessons that are often overlooked.

True the riot holds very important lessons, but so to does the rebuilding of that area (Also a history not taught and for what reason?), as well as the areas final decimation.

--William A. Franklin