Thanks to Dan Kening for the wonderful article on Lurrie Bell [“Mood Music,” June 24]. As a writer for the Wisconsin Blues Society and a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist, I found this article very interesting. Society treats individuals with schizophrenia poorly due to myths and misconceptions about the illness. Any time an article like this is written, it helps to humanize the individuals who suffer with this devastating disease. As a blues lover, I had the fortune of first seeing and hearing Lurrie play a couple years ago at the Chicago Blues Festival. He is phenomenal! I was surprised I had not heard him before. Now I know why. It seems he has been too ill at times to stay in the blues scene. I agree he has a great potential. You have done a service by writing about Lurrie.
— Lori Lewis / Waukegan
Barry bad
Over the last few years, Dave Barry has been getting progressively more unfunny. The laughs became less and less frequent. Then even the smiles disappeared. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I was confronted with “Climb Every Landfill” [July 15]. It wasn’t over the top. It wasn’t interesting. It wasn’t funny. It was pathetic.
Whatever happened to the old Dave Barry? And could someone please bring him back?
— Mark M. Quinn / Naperville
What about the shoes?
Margaret Anderson wrote that she saw shoes hanging high in the trees 24 years ago [In-box, June 24]. I am absolutely positive this was going on well before then.
When I was growing up in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, I always noticed gym shoes hanging in the trees and the wires, starting in the early 1960s. Children used to carry their gym shoes to school tied together by the laces, slung over their shoulders. Occasionally, bullies would take those shoes and throw them over the wires.
— David Diego Rodriguez / Chicago
The wonders of Kansas
Just received a copy of the July 1 Magazine about “Wild Bill” and Kansas. For a person who lives in Kansas and is used to derogatory comments from people who not only don’t live here but have never even visited, it was a wonderful surprise to read something positive about this fabulous state.
— Judy Handley / Wichita
Crime is crime
In his letter to the editor, James Madigan argues that Kathleen Soliah is a “political prisoner” [In-box, June 17]. He also cites Leonard Peltier as a “prisoner of conscience.”
Ms. Soliah is not being put on trial for her left-wing beliefs. She is being put on trial for participating in a bombing campaign. Mr. Peltier, if I remember correctly, was convicted of the murder of FBI agents. These are crimes that are in no way mitigated by the fact that they were committed for political reasons.
No society, no matter how liberal, could accept the notion that crimes-acts of violence committed with a political rationale-are to be passively ignored and the perpetrators allowed to continue committing them unmolested by the authorities. That premise would be a prescription for chaos in any society.
— Jim Cripe / Hoffman Estates
Chicago’s treasure
As a South Side native, I was very glad to hear there is so much opposition to the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan for Promontory Point [“Sore Point,” June 3]. Lauren Moltz is so right in saying, “It disconnects people from the lake, and that’s the best part of Chicago.”
Alfred Caldwell (as Daniel Burnham and others) had a point to his design-to elevate and unify man and nature. The limestone rocks are beautiful and inviting. Steel and concrete walls have their place, but not on Chicago’s lakefront.
Linda Kurtz Hicks / Fairfield, Iowa
Lakefront disgrace
I do not live near the lakefront of Chicago. But I was born and lived half of my life in Chicago. The lakefront’s beauty needs to be preserved, not destroyed. What they did to the area north of Belmont Harbor is a disgrace.
The City of Chicago should know better; look at some of the so-called improvements that turned out to be big mistakes. I remember when State Street was changed to “improve” it, and years later it was changed again because the city did not see what most of the people could see.
Governments have destroyed enough historic areas. Enough is enough.
— Kelly A. O’brien-Patterson / Woodridge
The real dirt
Don’t forget about the Calumet Park lakefront, located on the far end of the city in a neighborhood called the East Side, the 10th Ward.
I visited there last week and was appalled at how dirty the beach area is. There were three busloads of young children, but the concession stand was closed, and the beach loaded with debris plus dirty diapers. Granted people leave it dirty, but where are the cleanup crews?
— Josephine Sedlak / Chicago
The water’s fine
Diane Richards doesn’t go swimming in the lake very much [In-box, July 22]. If so, she would have heard about four lake races this summer in Chicago, including two Chicago Park District races; the annual 6-mile relay swim (Swim Across America) benefit for the Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center; and finally, on Sept. 9, the annual Big Shoulders 5K or 2.5K swim (with and without wetsuits) sponsored by the Park District and the Chicago Masters swim club (www.bigshoulders.org for information).
If Diane is interested, she can join our team each Saturday morning at 7:30 for our weekly open-water swim workout at Ohio Street Beach. It’s no race, just a great workout.
— Robert E. Zeitner / Flying Carp Swimming / Chicago
[Diane Richards responds: “We are aware of all the amateur lake swims. My partner, Ted Erikson, and I have participated in and completed all of them in the past. Our point was that more professional swims would bring income to our city from the athletes, coaches, tourists, etc.”]———-
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