DEERFIELD — After reading your article (“Flame games: What’s the most creatively competitive event at the Olympics? Well it isn’t rhythmic gymnastics,” Sept. 27) I had to pass along my own idea, which I thought of after Bob Costas said, “How are the Greeks going to top this?” (or something like that).
In the cauldron is a giant piece of saganaki (or whatever the name of it is) cheese. There is a giant bottle of the liquor used to make saganaki. It tips over, pouring the contents onto the cheese. The torchbearer is dressed like a waiter. He lights the cheese. The whole stadium yells OPAH!
— Dale Kaplan
MANY WRONGS MAKE IT RIGHT
CHICAGO — Surely you jest! Your “Rewind: A retro review” in Tempo (Sept. 29) was one of the best, most entertaining and insightful, historically speaking, things I’ve read of late. But, alas, it is too perfect! Surely no one can be that exactly, precisely wrong about every point he makes! Tell the truth — Dave Barry did it! No, it was even better than Dave. We howled! Please confirm: Could this have been the amazingly blind analysis of a serious writer or is Steve Johnson pulling our political leg?
If this is for real, no wonder the Tribune never found its biased Republican print into our home back then! This piece deserves a wider (national) audience, whatever the truth! Keep it coming!
— Karen Kozica Cichon
MUSEUM-PHOBIA IS OLD HAT
CHICAGO — I’m a bit puzzled and even dismayed that the person you have hired to report on the “Culture Front” is so worried about what people think about her and how she might be judged, that she has a hard time enjoying the various and widely diverse collections at Chicago’s many amazing museums. (“Portrait of a paranoid museum-goer,” Sept. 21.) I’m no art snob, and I was getting the sort of playful angle Julia Keller was trying to work with, but I still think it was a miscue to readers and that type of approach only works to perpetuate the idea that a museum is a place to be intimidated by.
I have experienced as much joy and wonder taking in Joseph Cornell’s magical boxes at the Art Institute as I have looking into to the wee and luxurious rooms of the Princess Castle at the Museum of Science & Industry. Go with an open mind and experience the things that speak to you, move past those that don’t.
— Bonnie Tawse
