Arrested development
GLEN ELLYN — Your article (“Growing older versus growing up,” Sept. 4, Arts & Entertainment) was a most insightful column on our society. It seems to me that many adults of my generation are in an adolescent stage of arrested development, culture-wise. I don’t think of myself as being very old — I’m 41 — however when I compare how I spend my leisure time or what my interests are with other people my age, I feel about 61. I don’t have any answers for society at large. My sphere of influence is limited to my three daughters who, happily, seem to be absorbing the values and interests of their parents. Maybe that is my only bit of wisdom: Do not give in to popular culture; it can be overcome.
— Tricia Benich
A `bridge’ to culture
CHICAGO — Alan Artner’s analysis about dumbing down popular culture (“Growing older versus growing up,” Sept. 4 Arts & Entertainment) was confirmed the very next morning by the announcement that the Tribune is discontinuing its bridge column. In its former space is a trivial (although sometimes tedious) puzzle, Sudoku, that originated in Japan.
Contract bridge, invented in the late 1920s by Harold Vanderbilt, demanded a challenging mixture of skill and luck that made it extremely popular. It remains popular, but, in America, mainly among older people.
In the ’50s and ’60s contract bridge was a popular game on college campuses. If you didn’t know how to play before you got to college, friends would soon teach you. Today its place among young people has been taken by video games that require more dexterity and fast reflexes but a lot less reasoning.
— Conrad Weisert
Irreversible `younging’
WASHINGTON — I just wanted to say thank you for your excellent and provocative piece “Growing Older Versus Growing Up.” It reminded me of Joshua Meyrowitz’s book “No Sense of Place,” and its descriptions of the blurring of childhood and adulthood. Alas, with the average age of video players now at 30 years old, I fear this is an irreversible trend! But pieces such as yours go a long way in helping to reverse it.
— Christine Rosen
Shrinking STEMS
MOUNT PROSPECT — Kudos to Alan Artner for his commentary, Growing older versus growing up, [Arts & Entertainment, Sept. 4]. Artner’s premise about how audiences for the more serious arts continue to get smaller can be applied to many things — ranging from the small class sizes at adult education centers to the public’s apparent lack of interest in STEMS (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). It seems that only in America can we find a general public that views sports as super cool while STEMs are considered to be nerdy/geeky at best. Worse yet, greed, fanatic sports fans, an apathetic public and inconsistent government policies allow the commercially driven college sports enterprise to grow unchecked. Most certainly, “growing older no longer means growing up” all but guarantees an expanding set of fun-loving consumers for college sports and other sectors of the entertainment business.
— Frank G. Splitt
Making a difference
MERIDEN, Conn. — Regarding your article in the Chicago Tribune [on Sept. 4], you are not alone in your thinking and I just wanted to tell you that “everybody talks about it …” and that someone is doing something about it. Many someones, in Meriden, Conn.
Meriden is a city of 61,000 in central Connecticut. We have urban and suburban and even small rural patches and a school system with 10,000 students. There is an influx of Puerto Rican, Dominican and other Hispanic folks to join the mix of Poles, French, Italian and other European souls with African-American folks dating back to the beginning of the nation and the migration from points South and West. There is a synagogue in the middle of town, and there are a bunch of churches. The economics are middle class and lower, and we have some wonderful folks and some real pills. Just like everywhere else.
Enter the Meriden ArtsTrust, in its beginning stages. We are going to give our best try to build an audience through the school system. We will be teacher-driven, giving teachers and school administrators the chance to do that for which they became teachers.
Support, resources, public support, inspired students, civic pride. Some city planners are talking about making an arts district in the center of town, replacing, among other things, a low-income housing project and a whole lot of empty, scarred space. Some of the students are new to the area, some are homegrown, but all are the American Dream. Now they will be taught to appreciate.
Please join us from half a continent away. Britney Spears can’t sing, can we agree on that? We both know that economic class has nothing to do with it; neither does ethnicity. People have to be taught to appreciate; it doesn’t just happen.
Let’s keep in touch — we need each other. Please write back, you sound like you could use a hug.
— Katrina S. Axelrod
