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_______________ SECOND THOUGHTS: LOST IN THE SUPERMARKET BY SALLIE TISDALE (03/11/99)
	How unfortunate Sallie Tisdale's opinion of large chain-style grocery stores causes her to "blink back tears." In a small town in a rural area where unusual is hard to come by, we call ourselves lucky to have such a grocery stocked with supplies of which we could once only dream. When an ingredients list in our cooking magazine reads like foreign movie credits, we now have hope we might be able to obtain the majority of the ingredients and make do without the rest. Before our big chain moved in we weren't so lucky. I am also glad to have the opportunity to buy a few prepared meals, fill a prescription and purchase the odd plumbing item in the "sickly light" with the "lost ... crowd of people." When the close of the day nears, I am eager to get home and spend my little free time with family, friends and my small dog. Few have the leisure Tisdale has to peruse every little market, driving to and fro to far-flung corners of a diverse town. I can appreciate mourning the loss of "small, ordinary neighborhood grocer(ies)" and their local flavor, but I really do not think that the rise of the large-scale chain grocery store "is an appalling moment at an appalling time in a long human history of excess and hunger and need." Really. -- Stacie Schulze
_______________ ENCHANTED FOREST BY REED HEARNE (03/11/99)
	I'm very happy that Reed Hearne is getting some (we writers can be a reclusive lot), but is Salon doing any of the rest of us a favor by dedicating two pages to his supposedly amorous exploits? I've been gay for some 42 years at last count and I've never felt the need to do it in the bushes. Yet according to the media, I'm apparently frightfully abnormal in that. Time and again I am reminded that my disinterest in running about naked in public, in anonymous sex, in public sex, in sex with small children, in dressing up in women's clothing, in multiple sex partners in a single night -- in "designer" drugs for dogsake -- makes me a very bizarre creature indeed. Gay men aren't supposed to be so damn vanilla! Or, perhaps, the media has it all wrong? Is that possible? Could it be that I'm really normal after all? Shh! Don't tell. There might be more like me -- and that'd be bad for business. The business of hawking ad space, that is. Normalcy doesn't sell, they tell me. I'm a very liberal Democrat and happy that Hearne can enjoy his sexual freedom in this, the best of all possible worlds. There's too much sexual repression in this world, I agree. But me, I'm just tired of being expected to live up (or down) to the same level of debauchery. Gimme a break, OK?! -- Hall Owen Calwaugh
_______________ GUN SMOKE BY DARYL LINDSEY (03/11/99)
	Salon isn't customarily in the habit of insulting its readers' intelligence, but Daryl Lindsey's "Gun smoke" does just that: By unthinkingly adopting the vernacular of Handgun Control Inc. and fellow would-be firearms prohibitionists, he wades headlong into the mire of meaningless rhetorical doublespeak that these organizations employ. It amounts to the abandonment of logic in favor of nauseating tabloid emotionalism of a sort you normally have the smarts to eschew. There is no such thing as a "gun crime" or "gun violence," any more than there's such a thing as "baseball bat crime" or "ball-peen hammer violence." There are simply crime and violence. Attempting to demonize the tool and the maker of the tool via association with the ill uses to which tools are occasionally put contravenes logic. Unless you're similarly prepared to blame Goodyear for gridlock, Ryder Truck Rental for terrorist bombings and Craftsman screwdrivers for shoddy construction, your logic is hypocritical as well as intellectually indefensible. It's very trendy right now to join in lockstep with the anti-Second Amendment brigade, and I'm sure you've got sound market research showing that it'll earn you brownie points in all the right demographics. But please, employ at least a bare minimum of logic (and a few basic facts) as you embark on your tired little crusade for the supposed common good. It'll lend your cause at least the appearance of credibility, and will allow your audience to read without embarrassment. -- David Livingstone If you want to reduce the health-care costs of treating gunshot wounds (a tiny fraction of the costs of treating automobile related injuries) then stop the people who do the shooting. There is a proven way of doing that: Jail them. Most of them are already felons, for whom it is a felony to even touch a bullet, let alone a gun. Look at the example of Richmond, Va., where they've drastically reduced their gun-related crime rate by sending everyone caught illegally in possession of a weapon to jail. -- Rob Keeney Lafayette, Ind. SALON | March 18, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| BEAUTY AND THE GEEKS BY JANELLE BROWN

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