Erosia

LEO welcomes letters that are brief (250 words max) and thoughtful. Ad hominem attacks will be ignored, and we need your name and a daytime phone number. Send snail mail to EROSIA, 640 S. Fourth St., Louisville, Ky. 40202. Fax to 895-9779 or e-mail to [email protected]. We may edit for length, grammar and clarity.

Walking Papers
Dear Stephen George,
I read your article in Leo (“Birds of a feather,” Feb. 7). Very interesting. Francene (Cucinello) was as perceptively racist last Derby season in her on-air comments about Broadway cruising as she was on her comments about Native Americans. She is an embarrassment to Louisville, if not for her disrespect of the concept of equality “with liberty and justice for all.” I hope a great effort will continue to send her packing. After all, the white man stole America from its rightful owners and then used slave labor to enhance his grip on the land.
Dennis J. Hummel

Anna is No Molly
It cannot be true!
I miss one week of Leo and am totally unaware that Molly Ivins has passed. I watch the news almost every night and am well aware that a no-talent, bust-enhanced whore is dead. But I heard not a word of the passing of the brilliant Molly Ivins. What a country! What a media we have. I just wish to express my personal sadness for the loss of Molly. I never read a single column she wrote that did not make me think or did not encourage me to be a better person. She made me laugh, made me cry and, most of all, made me wish I had stayed with my original goal to be a newspaper columnist.
Some people would walk across hot coals to meet Paris Hilton. I would not walk across the street. But to have spent a few hours discussing life and politics with Molly would have been a joy I would never forget.
Someone asked last week to name your favorite Molly quote. Instead, I would like to quote Jim Welp, who wrote in Leo last week: “Meanwhile with the dead in Iraq piling up, the Senate took decisive action: It spent the week arguing about how to word a non-binding resolution declaring that President Bush is a doody-head and that the surge plan is yucky.”
Molly may not have said it exactly that way, but I can guarantee she would have laughed reading it, and would have appreciated the style.
Goodbye, Molly. The rest can only hope one day to be half of what you were.
Richard Hodge

Evening Off
I haven’t been left so at a loss for the central point of a literary piece since Mr. Smock wondered in The C-J what Lolita was up to these days. (She’s dead; she died in childbirth before Humbert’s book was published.)
I’m left wondering why to read Zora Neale Hurston, having read nothing at all about the central question of its art. The article is entirely devoted to the very things it says don’t matter much.
I take it it’s different, “Other.” OK. But after all, there are no contemporary people in, say, any 19th century authors, and so on. It’s remarkably prescient of so many writers to have invited us “Others” to live in their worlds, but I’m afraid I need a little something more to go on before I plan an evening.
Fred S. Miller

ABCs of Dangerous Dogs
It’s been a month since the Jer-meister signed into law the new ordinance that claimed it would protect the public and keep Louisville’s streets safe from dangerous dogs. However, anyone viewing the evening news gets the feeling that something ain’t quite right: a guy has to leap on the roof of a car to escape three pit bulls, a pack of feral dogs is running loose in the streets of Old Lou, two dogs are trapped in an abandoned house and running around on the roof for over a week, and where is Animal Control with all their new powers and authority? They’re still claiming they can’t cope with these situations.
Well, the real problem is obvious, and I can’t believe nobody else has figured it out yet: Our dogs can’t read! I know you want to deny it, but it’s true. If dog owners had taken any time and taught them the basics, they would be able to read this new ordinance and see for themselves that roaming about and terrorizing people is against the law. They would realize that not only should they stay in their yards where they belong, but they would give up their habits of chasing cats and cars and begin behaving as though they were truly domesticated.
What are all those upper-crust canines coming here for the shows in March going to think of our homegrown pooches? I’ll tell you what: They’re going to think they’re beneath them; that they’re nothing more than doggie bumpkins and backwoods dropouts! We can’t allow that to happen here in Louisville. We can’t allow our dogs to be below the national average in dog reading ability.
I say that we demand Frankfort provide us with a $500,000 grant of emergency money to combat the chronic embarrassment of our dogs being deficient in reading skills. It will not only show that we are compassionate, but it will do so much to reform them and make them good canine citizens. After all, a dog’s mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Barbara Haines

Cloning Clowns
Considering President Bush’s opposition to stem cell research, I assume that he is also unfavorable to cloning research. Though I strongly support stem cell research, I am opposed to cloning research because somebody might clone George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld.
Marvin Fleischman