Up Tempo Dirge
I read Jack Neely's article [Secret History, Nov. 21] with a heavy heart, as I too, was fortunate to have known David Brandt while growing up in First Presbyterian Church. I sang in the youth choir, played in the bell choir, and played flute solos and duets for the morning services. David, being the character that he was, made music fun and instilled in me my love for classical music which I keep to this day. Like Mr. Neely, I remember as well, trying to keep up with David and his frequent utterances in German! Years later, when I got married at First Presbyterian, I was so disappointed to learn that he had retired and moved to North Carolina as I desperately wanted him to play for us, although "The Wedding March" probably would have turned into "The Wedding Skip"! Here's to you David Brandt. I am sure you are up in Heaven as we speak, leading the angels in an up tempo version of "Amazing Grace"!
Janet May Merritt
Clinton
Expense of Ignorance
Joe Sullivan's column [Insights, Nov. 21] reflects the concerns and convictions of many of us. The problem, in my mind, is that Joe hasn't done his research very thoroughly. If he were to contact Rick Sawyer at Helen Ross McNabb he would quickly learn that somewhere around 50 percent of the incarcerated persons in our jails, and in jails across the nation, are people with mental illness. THEY ARE NOT CRIMINALS—THEY ARE ILL!
It is way past time for our elected officials to get their heads out of the sand and realize that millions of dollars spent to house mentally ill persons in jails and prisons without proper medication and treatment is a total waste of taxpayers' money and a real travesty of justice. Proper treatment could return a vast majority of these people to responsible positions in society and make them taxpayers instead of burdens on the rest of us, whose elected officials are now busy building cages and cells with our tax dollars.
The stigma placed on the mentally ill and resulting costs of that stigma is the shame of a society where 20 percent of our citizens will be afflicted with this illness sometime in their lives. Metro Pulse, and all other media, could do our world a great service if they would just take a close look at our injustice and inconsiderate treatment of our mentally ill.
Lee Vandewalker
Executive director, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Knoxville
Oh, Gross!
Tamar Wilner's preview of the Jerry McCain show [Spotlights, Nov. 21] contains a gross inaccuracy. McCain's song "She's Tough" was not remade by the Fabulous Thunderbirds into "Tuff Enuff" (an original composition by T-Bird Kim Wilson). "She's Tough" was given a rather straight reading as a cover songon the band's debut.
As a Knoxvillian who values accuracy and precision (and Knoxville is a greatplace tovalue these qualities), I thought I should point this out.
Gardner Howland
Knoxville
Noxious Odors
I am writing as a several-month visitor to the fine city of Knoxville about the one truly serious problem I've noticed here: the noxious odor which is released with sporadic consistency from somewhere just north of Fort Sanders. I live in the toxic swamp of New York City but I have never smelled anything quite as apocalyptic as the bitter synthetic stench that on certain nights, usually Saturdays and Sundays, coats the entire city from Kingston Pike to Downtown (most recently on the night of Nov. 24)——not even the cancer cloud that persisted over New York for months after the collapse of the Trade Towers. And that was a disaster, not a routine industrial emission.
I've tried to call the local EPA authorities and have gotten only a runaround; since I'm going home soon I must leave it to Knoxvillians to pursue the long, hard road to their own environmental justice, and I have to assume that there are some dedicated folks around here who are doing just that. Good luck to them. I hope this excellent newspaper is in the thick of that fight.
The furtive pattern of nighttime and weekend releases confirms that laws do exist to regulate these emissions and that the fumes are far from benign. But the American flock, in all its infinite wisdom, has now patriotically entrusted its health and well-being to a pack of salivating, tooth-snapping wolves in wolves' clothing. Accordingly, air pollution laws will go more and more unenforced by the design of regulatory agencies and by the wholesale corruption of the judiciary with industry-friendly appointments——if such laws are not overturned altogether. But surely, if any environmental laws can be brought to bear in post-9/11 America, a source of pollution like this, apparently located foursquare in a major population center, hard by schools and hospitals, which consistently releases so foul an odor, can be and must be cleaned up or shut down.
What nightmare can Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden perpetrate that we are not already doing to ourselves, day after day? Stand up for the health of your children, Knoxville!
David Brody
Knoxville
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