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_______________ GOING NATIVE BY CHRIS COLIN (03/15/99)
	Chris Colin's essay reflects several misunderstandings of study abroad, and of Chile in particular. He disparages the very real cultural exchange that takes place, even at the annoying parties junior year abroad students throw, even the pointless romances they have. But through these programs, Americans learn about Chile, and Chileans learn about the U.S. -- and not just in the ways you would expect. Colin may have had miserable experiences with some of the hundreds of stupid, annoying Americans that fill places like the Boomerang --and yes, it is a terrible, loud, annoying bar-- but he failed entirely to understand the realities of cultural exchange that surround places like it. Americans, both North and South, can learn from each other and from the envy we have of each other, even if they do that learning at parties, and even if those who learn are drunk undergraduates with fake smiles and bright scarves. -- Aaron Weber, Haverford, Pa.
_______________ BABY ON BOARD BY KATHERINE ELLISON (03/16/99)
	I am torn between admiration and dismay for Katherine Ellison. Her tale of bringing her children with her to her job as a foreign correspondent seemed at once a wonderful example of a family finding its own way and a terrible display of narcissism masquerading as commitment. Ellison seems to feel that it has had a wonderful effect on her sons to go along with her everywhere. Maybe it has, but it also seems like she has put them and her colleagues through a great deal of inconvenience in order to get what she wants -- i.e., the chance to be Mommy Correspondent. She speaks of being "the mother I passionately wanted to be." I wonder if that mother is the same as the mother her children need her to be. -- Savannah Jahrling
_______________ BRILLIANT CAREERS: NATURE GIRL BY DAVID BOWMAN (03/09/99)
	While I enjoyed David Bowman's report on Annie Dillard (whose new book, "For the Time Being," we have the pleasure of publishing), I feel obliged on grounds of accuracy to deconstruct his concluding paragraphs. When quoted as saying, "Just because I'm religious doesn't mean I'm insane," what Annie said was, "Just because I'm religious doesn't mean I'm a saint." Similarly, the New York Times Magazine has her claim, "I didn't know you were supposed to write on ceilings" instead of the more prosaic "I didn't know you were supposed to write in scenes." Still, your readers benefit from David Bowman's interesting piece and get a couple laughs in the bargain; not bad, and certainly not insane, either. -- Gary Fisketjon Vice President, Editor-at-Large Alfred A. Knopf
_______________ THE CHINA SYNDROME BY JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL (03/08/99)
	What lousy timing you have. Salon runs Joshua Marshall's pathetic little attempt to write off the Los Alamos scandal as much right-wing ado about nothing on the day after besieged National Security Advisor Samuel Berger's admission that China indeed had benefited from the leaks. Whether the apparent theft by China of W-88 warhead design will force a shift in U.S. nuclear strategy is a legitimate question, as is the true military significance of the rocket telemetry that the Chinese obtained without all the hassle that attends clandestine activity. But to characterize this developing story merely as right-wing paranoia (or nostalgia for Dr. Strangelove) is analytically trite, especially when the administration itself acknowledges the serious nature of the problem. The possible linkage between contributions to Clinton-Gore and the Los Alamos scandal might indeed be the latest Republican fantasy; they are not particularly adept at connecting dots. But to lay the Los Alamos scandal at the feet of the right wing is so politically disingenuous as to make Marshall look foolish. And for that, Salon editors are at fault as much as he. -- Steve Fought Arlington, Va. SALON | March 22, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| RIGHT ON! HATS OFF TO A CONDEMNED MAN BY DAVID HOROWITZ

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