Weekend America

Letters

Letters: Losing a Team and a Planet

Desiree Cooper

Shirley Shin

MARCH 1, 2008

The Desert Planet Tatooine

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I lived through the Browns' move from Cleveland and I can tell you that a team move isn't a big deal. The Browns left me in 1995 for another city, and so I filed for emotional divorce. I said to hell with them and took up with a younger woman, er team. Namely, I focused on local college teams like Ohio State, Kent State and Notre Dame, none of which is going to move to either Baltimore or Oklahoma City. When a woman, er team, with the same name as the one who left me showed up four years later in 1999, I was able to say that I was no longer interested.

Hank Summers
Cleveland, Ohio

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I just returned from a short visit to St. Cloud, Minn., where my 92-yr-old mother is living in a nursing home. I so miss days on the ice in fish houses and the communities created. As a little girl, I would ice skate to many such ice houses occupied by serious fishermen. I'd knock and ask how they were doing, hoping for a treat of a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. During a country drive, we witnessed many small towns of ice houses, which fondly brought these memories to the surface. My Southern California friends may now have a better understanding of the tough Northerners!

Carole Schuman
San Clemente, Calif.

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I disagree with the comments I just heard about the school district's canceling of all school dances for the rest of the year. Yes, the school district probably should have been less reactive, but I am on the other side of this issue. At the school where I work, we limit dances to one per year. Instead, we hold a games night, an idea that came from our student council members.

It's true that most kids see things on TV, in movies and in music videos that are a lot more graphic than close contact at a school dance. But do you really want your children, in public, imitating everything they've seen? Have you ever offered to chaperone a school dance? Do you want to spend your valuable time standing on the sidelines, deciding when two students have gone too far, and stepping in to tell them to stop? Do you want to do this multiple times in one hour? And what would going too far be for your child? Would you want someone to step in before your tween got into a bad situation?

There is a line between being appropriate and being a prude, but I prefer that those supervising my future children err on the side of the prude. I challenge you to chaperone a few dances in your school district and reevaluate your opinion.

Elisabeth Cleveland
Minneapolis, Minn.

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What a nice story about your mom becoming a U.S. citizen. It pleases me to know that someone is getting through the maze of paperwork. You said it can take months or several years to go through the process. Ha! I have friends who have had their papers in for 10 years and still no action! I wish NPR would do an in-depth story into how long it is actually taking folks to complete the process. I think that this number of 12 million "illegals" is so false because more than half of them have been in the process line for many years - waiting and waiting. Your mom was lucky. She got through it! Congratulations!

Barbara Blowers
Port Townsend, Wash.

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I thought the story about Angela Kim's mother becoming a U.S. citizen was very touching and I appreciated your airing that. However, I think it's important to acknowledge all the immigrants who get lost in the process of becoming legal citizens.

In 2007, several citizenship ceremonies in St. Paul, Minn., were canceled because of staffing shortages, leaving many immigrants who had gone through the entire process in a lurch (and unable to participate in the Minnesota presidential caucuses, and so far, unable to vote at all this year). It is also important to highlight all the immigrants who would like to become legal citizens, but are unable because of the costs or the bureaucratic and cumbersome process. When people say that illegal immigrants should "get in line" to becoming a legal citizen, we must remind them that there is not always a "line."

Julia Davidson
Minneapolis, Minn.

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The reporter in the Weekend Weather segment made mention of the "desert planet of Alderaan" in reference to the Star Wars galaxy. I thought you should know that Alderaan is indeed difficult to visit in that it was the planet destroyed by the Death Star. Alderaan was not a desert planet; in fact, it was considered to be the most pleasant place in the galaxy, like the Southern California of planets. Tatooine was the desert planet presented in the universe. You'll probably get tons of e-mails about this. I love the section, but I appreciate fact-checking even if the place is fictional.

Donovan Beeson
Chicago, Ill.

PS: And though my name isn't a clue to this, I am female. And yes, I like Star Wars.

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I trust I'm not the first to point this out since I heard it on the radio a full 35 minutes ago. I'm sure you've been flooded. Let me add my voice to the pile and point out that your recent comment about the weather referring to the "desert planet of Alderaan" from the Star Wars universe is, of course, incorrect. Alderaan is the adopted home of Princess Leia when she is taken in by the Organa family at the end of Episode III. It is described by Wikipedia as "an Earth-like planet covered mostly in water."

Alderaan was the original destination of the Millennium Falcon in Episode IV, and when our heroes arrive they find it destroyed by the Death Star, which is still in the vicinity and captures them. Their origin on the same flight was, of course, the desert world of Tatooine, home of Luke Skywalker, the other exiled twin featured at the end of Episode III. This I assume is the planet you meant to refer to.

Mike Halleen
Los Angeles, Calif.

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