Letters to the Editor Cultural Sensitivity Needed To the Editor: I am writing in response to Serah Cooksey's letter in the May 25th issue. The Beale Street Music Festival may or may not be racist, but you certainly seem to be! How dare you suggest that including music geared toward African Americans will cause tempers to "explode" and riots to ensue? What gives you the authority to declare that white Memphians "know how to behave" while the black population cannot be controlled? Generalizations such as these are the very basis of racism. Your letter leads me to believe that you are ignorant of a little event called Woodstock '99 in which a predominantly white audience began full-scale rioting while listening to an all-white band. Is this the kind of good behavior to which you are referring? Finally, you imply that African Americans do not attend the Memphis Ballet -- this insinuation is both unsubstantiated and completely irrelevant to the issue. Ballet is only one of many forms of physical expression, and it is presumptuous of you to propose that it is the only valid one. I suggest that you undergo some cultural-sensitivity training -- preferably in time to enjoy next year's festival without fearing that the black guy next to you will start World War III right there in Tom Lee Park. With your kind of thinking, how can Memphis ever hope to overcome its "us against them" mentality? Kristen S. Whirley Memphis Lame Ducks on Ice To the Editor: In a letter to the editor (May 25th issue), RiverKings general manager Jim Riggs attempted to clear the air regarding the "lame-duck" status of his franchise. All one has to do is look at the attendance figures from before and after the announced move to see that the team did lose support following the revealing of their plans. I canceled my season tickets. As a loyal Memphian at the time, I would not support a franchise that did not support Memphis. Riggs refers to a "couple of rough seasons while dealing with Mid-South Coliseum issues." I will testify from personal experience that the condition of the coliseum did not deteriorate enough between the season before and after the announcement to account for the loss of fan support. It might have had more to do with Mr. Riggs' running of the club than the "coliseum issues." The RiverKings went from one game away from a CHL championship to the worst record in league history in a few years. Couple that with poor marketing, a hideous new jersey design, a new coach almost every other week (three last season alone), and you get a "lame-duck." For any of the poor saps in DeSoto County who are helping to pay for Mr. Riggs' $40 million ice palace and who may feel better because he said the team signed a 10-year lease, please remember the courts found that the RiverKings broke a long-term lease with the Mid-South Coliseum. A citizen of Memphis, Tennessee, should not have to drive to DeSoto County for hockey or anything else. A new team from another league will be in Memphis in the future. Whenever a Central Hockey League team has gone head-to-head with another league in the same market, the CHL team has lost. I will drive past the DeSoto Center and the RiverKings to support whoever this new team is. That is, if the I-55 construction doesn't hinder me. Ron Shelton Oxford, MS Blame People To the Editor: Like many gun owners, I found the editorial "Firing Blanks" (May 18th issue) offensive. The "comedy," as you put it, starring Charlton Heston speaks about gun safety classes. The state of Tennessee has made it mandatory for hunters who were born after 1968 to attend and pass a hunter safety course which lasts one week. The "Billary" administration has passed many gun laws without enforcing the laws we already have and they blame the guns themselves. The blame, sir, should be placed on the people who own these guns where children can reach them and the criminals who steal the guns from legitimate owners. The owners of these guns should teach their children proper gun safety and keep the gun(s) in a secure place where their children cannot have access to them. When a criminal breaks into a house, steals a gun, brings the gun home, and a child gets his hands on that gun, then shoots a classmate -- we blame the gun. We should blame the criminal who stole the gun. That is the problem with this nation, we blame everyone and everything besides the criminal. S.A. Miller Memphis Wake Up, Men To the Editor: George Shadroui's Viewpoint ("Just Saying No," May 25th issue) is to be commended! With each paragraph I read, I felt myself nodding my head in total agreement. The sad thing is most men do not think like you and think that Hugh [Hefner] is cool and that's the kind of life to lead. Children who admire their fathers, wives who trust their husbands, and friends and family who don't think you've lost your mind really hit home with me! WAKE UP, MEN! Thank you George Shadroui, for restoring my faith that this belief still exists -- even for just a few men! D. Barrett Memphis Biblical Debate (cont.) To the Editor: I would like to rebut a couple of Mr. Ted Miller's points regarding Harry Moore's Viewpoint article from the May 11th issue of the Flyer. Specifically: The Bible and the age of the Earth: While it is true that the Bible itself does not give a specific age of the Earth, this has not stopped certain theologians from using it to find one. For example, in 1654, Archbishop Usher used the genealogies to calculate that the Earth had been created on October 26, 4004 BC, at 9 a.m. Somewhat more recently, William Miller (1782-1849), who founded a religious movement that would eventually become the Seventh-Day Adventists (SDA), dabbled in biblical chronology, initially for the sake of predicting the Apocalypse. The current SDA strongly promote "young Earth" creationism. This issue is important chiefly because so many fundamentalist Christian movements assert the inerrancy of the Bible, thus contradicting the evidence observed in nature that the Earth, and the Universe, are billions of years old. Evolution: Evolution is not a theory, and no "ardent evolutionist" would ever say such a thing. Evolution is a fact, and the proof of this is very simple. If you visit a good museum, you will find exhibits of dinosaur bones, our evidence that they once existed. Nowhere will you find living dinosaurs. On the other hand, you could also go to a zoo, and find some living elephants. If you go back to the museum, though, you won't find fossil elephants. What you will find are fossils of creatures that have some features in common with elephants, and which increasingly resemble elephants as they get more and more recent. If fossil evidence doesn't persuade you, you could always head on over to the Galapagos. Ever since Darwin visited these islands, scientists have been keeping track of the species there, and there is now an impressive body of continual observation of species diversification over time. The key point to grasp here is that theories are an attempt to explain how a thing works, not whether it exists. Evolution is an accepted scientific fact. The various theories of evolution try to describe how it works. What evolutionists argue about are such things as the merits of the gradualism vs. the punctuated equilibrium models of evolution. David Rhode Memphis To the Editor: This is in regards to the letter written by Ted Miller. Of the seven points Mr. Miller makes about the Bible, I have little argument with any save the last. The Bible, he says, took 2,000-plus years to write, but what Mr. Miller fails to note is that those 20-odd centuries occurred between the rise of Judaism and the first century after Christ's death. The Bible was actually a complete text by the year 100, when the Book of Revelation was written by St. John. And for several centuries, there were quite a bit more than 66 books in the Bible, thanks to the removal of the Apocrypha (reintegrated into the Old Testament in the Catholic Bible in this century, and added as a middle section between the Old and New Testaments in many versions of the New and Revised English Bibles) and the so-called Pseudepigrapha (which included the Gospel of Thomas and the Secret Book of Mark) by High Church bishops with their own agendas to fulfill. As to the multiple-languages point, the Old Testament was written in Aramaic originally and the New Testament in Greek, exactly two different languages. Hardly "many" -- the many languages have only come in the various translations within the last 1,000 years as the church's missionaries found their way into various corners of the planet. But the original texts were written in extreme Western Asia. Furthermore, I rather doubt that Mr. Moore intended his Viewpoint article as satire or comedy in any form. Less amusing still is Mr. Miller's contention that our society is increasingly "anti-Christian." Evidently Mr. Miller opposes the concept of anyone choosing to worship any deity save his? If society seems anti-Christian, it is due to the aggressive and oppressive manner in which Christianity has often been spread throughout history, leaving little or no room for other ways to prosper and grow. And while Jesus did encourage his disciples to spread the word, it is clear (to me, at least) that none of them had any idea what He was teaching or what His intent was. Christianity at the dawn of the 21st Century looks nothing like the words Jesus originally spoke. And I find no humor in that at all. William Feagin Memphis No Sense of History To the Editor: Well, once again The Memphis Flyer fails to pay tribute to the real Memphis flyer. You can publicize the hell out of Memphis In May but for some reason you cannot bring yourselves to put in at least one line about the Memphis Belle having flown her last mission on May 17, 1943. Jeez people do you think that a passing reference to a historical event is going to tarnish your image as an "alternative newspaper" or what? David Sowell Memphis The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.