Two weeks ago, we went inside a maternity ward to check out the playlists of expecting mothers. One mom planned on giving birth to "Wildcat," a beat-driven instrumental song that features a roaring cat. We were overwhelmed by the number of listeners who responded to the idea of giving birth to that song. So we asked Ratatat, the two-man band behind that track, what other songs they would recommend expecting mothers listen to?

Letters Read this Week

My late father was a conscientious objector, and while he was not part of the Starvation Project, he knew some men in it. I remember most vividly my father telling me that those who were in it decided that to be fair to the project, they could never leave their residence alone. They always had to go in groups of two or three, so there would be at least one person to try to convince a participant about to succumb to temptation and get something to eat on the outside.

My father served first as a firefighter in the national forests above Los Angeles. However, because of his allergies, he was sick too much to serve in that setting. Because he had his Master's Degree in Social Work and had worked for the State Department of Mental Health prior to the war, he was sent to Connecticut to work as an orderly in a state mental hospital in Middleton, Conn.

Because of my upbringing, I too filed as a conscientious objector to all war, and was so recognized by my draft board. I had a harder time getting a student deferment from the draft than I did to get C.O. status. But then again, I had letters from a school official and members of my church attesting to my faith. This was in 1965, when the Vietnam War was beginning to ramp up.

Thank you for bringing back to me many memories with your story about conscientious objectors and my father.

Tom Griffith
Los Angeles, Calif.

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There seemed to to a disturbing sub-text to your on the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi. The tone of the story seemed to imply that the murder would have been justified if he was a Muslim, that the killer's real crime was not knowing enough about world's religions to kill what Nirinjan Singh Khalsa calls "the real enemy."

Joe Radke
Milwaukee, Wis.

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It's Saturday, September 15, and I just listened to the segment on the overcrowded hospital maternity war.

Who put this together? What an absolutely horrible portrayal of birthing! A woman screaming! A woman drugged, afraid she might feel something! Who could possibly relax and have a decent birth in that environment. The C-section rate in that hospital must be way above average.

I realize you were discussing the down side of overcrowding but the overall tone of the piece would leave a young woman with an awful picture of childbirth. What most of those women need is a different vision for what birthing is, what a woman's body is capable of. And a good midwife.

Thank god my daughters did not hear your show. I have a very different portrayal of birthing to offer them and it does not include screams or epidurals.

Nancy Wallace
Eugene, Ore.