A PAUSE FOR THE CAUSEWAY
In Kirk Semple's article, "Asphalt Bungle" (April 8), Donald Kipnis is attributed the idea that scaevola bushes should be planted along the causeway's edge to - among other things - keep out individuals who want to fish. This idea is representative of the segregationist attitude so common in metropolitan areas today. The elite move in, then immediately put up walls, gates, moats (islands), and other barriers to keep everybody else out.
What these shortsighted fools in their mansions and towering concrete colonies fail to realize is that the person engaged in fishing activities (or basketball, swimming, jogging, et cetera) is less likely to be engaged in the activities of breaking and entering, mugging, or the like.
With the dearth of public parks and fishing piers, and with condo canyons taking over most of the shoreline, places to fish from shore are getting very difficult to find. So when a public project offers the opportunity to provide leisure or recreational activities to the disadvantaged, at little or no cost to the taxpayer, it should be seized without hesitation. And if the activity is fishing, which can be enjoyed regardless of age, race, or social strata, then government should even promote it.
I can only hope that when the final decision concerning the landscape design is made, enlightened individuals like Raymond Jungles will wield some influence and make it possible for the little people to continue enjoying the causeway. Who knows? Not only might it save some underprivileged youth from a life of crime, but shoreline fishing might even become a new pastime for the elite.
Jorge Vidal
Coral Gables
EVERYBODY'S GOT AN ANGST TO GRIND
As an avid theatergoer, I was extremely dismayed by Roberta Morgan's review of the Experimental Theater Company's Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (April 8). It was refreshing to see a theater company debut with something off the beaten track; I found the show to be fast paced, energetic, and well acted by the entire ensemble.
I found Morgan's review even more distressing in light of the fact that I had once attended a play called The List by a new theater company in Fort Lauderdale. The List was so badly written and poorly directed that four extra-strength Tylenols could not make that "rotten theater" headache go away. I bring up The List because it was written and directed by none other than - you guessed it - Roberta Morgan. For her even to begin to criticize any show after the debacle that I attended is beyond me. Not only that, she confused the farce in Vampires with the theater of the absurd.
I had hoped Ms. Morgan would at least try to nurture and encourage new theater companies rather than grind her angst in columns that read like a woman scorned.
It is my fervent hope that those who wish to produce challenging theater do so without the fear of repercussions as a result of the opinion of a misguided critic.
Kelley Cody
Miami
THE ARYAN NATION PROCLAMATION
Eugene Sotelo's letter in the April 8 issue of New Times, regarding Chuck Shepherd's "News of the Weird" of March 18, states that the "Aryan Nations is not a white `supremacist' group." In fact, that's exactly what it is.
The Aryan Nations is an Idaho-based paramilitary Identity Church group led by the Rev. Richard Butler. The Identity movement holds that white Anglo-Saxons are the biblical "chosen people," Jews are the children of Satan, Jesus was not a Jew but rather the ancestor of white northern Europeans, the white race is inherently superior to others, and nonwhites are "mud people" on the same spiritual level as animals and therefore have no souls.
In October 1983, members of the Aryan Nations joined with Identity-minded members of two other white supremacist groups - the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord and the National Alliance - to form a revolutionary gang that sought nothing less than the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. This gang, which carried out a series of lawless activities, was variously called the Order, Bruders Schweigen (German for Silent Brotherhood), the White American Bastion, and the Aryan Resistance Movement.
Even with many of its members behind bars, the Aryan Nations is still active. Not surprisingly, it has increased its efforts at recruitment in the prisons.
Michael Winograd, associate director Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith
Miami
THE BILL OF WHITES
Eugene Sotelo alleges that the Aryan Nations are not a white supremacist organization. In actuality, members of white racist organizations often have allegiances to many different groups. Some, like the Klan or the Aryan Nations, purport to abjur and deny they are white supremacist and merely state their interest in racial separation and purity.
In Talked to Death, Jim Ellison, the spiritual teacher of Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, in the summer of 1983 (the same summer he was indicted for torching an Indiana synagogue) is found addressing an Aryan Nations congress, telling the assembled that their "sword is out of the sheath and it's ready to strike, for every one of our people they killed, we ought to kill 100 of theirs." If this is the kind of down-home, fun-loving joshing found at all-white racial purity group socials, heaven keep us from listening in on the rhetoric of actual white supremacists.
New Times could have had its fact checkers flip through any of a number of works on the so-called white Aryan resistance to refute Sotelo's casual claims.
Name withheld by request
Miami Beach
BEST ERECTION
The Broward Center for the Performing Arts is honored to be voted "Best New Building" by New Times (1992 Best of Miami, March 25). We are very proud of our new facility, and it is very gratifying to know that the center is appreciated by the press as well as the public.
Celeste Bennett, director of communications
Broward Center for the Performing Arts
Ft. Lauderdale
BEST THESPIAN THANK-YOU
Thank you for the honor and wonderful surprise you gave me by naming me "Best Local Actor" in your recent Best of Miami issue. I hope I can always live up to such a billing!
I wish you all and your paper the best of '92 and always.
John Felix
Miami
BEST MUSICAL CHEERS
I'm aghast, nonplussed, stupefied, but overjoyed at receiving the "Best Classical Radio Program" accolade for the second year in a row! Thanks again; and Beethoven and Mozart send their regards!
Ken Martin
WTMI-FM 93.1
Miami
BARRY, BARRY BAD
Just a quick note to let you know Lynda J. Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek of April 8 is a waste of good space in your newspaper. It is beyond me why you continue to run it. Maybe it's me, but I don't get it! (But I don't think it is, because none of my friends get it, either.)
Maybe you can take up a collection from your staff to get Lynda an injection of humor.
Life in Hell is killer!
Cheryl J. Correa
Miami
