My wife and I thought the 12/3 Impolitics column ("The Death of St. John") by Geov Parrish about John Stanford was in the poorest of taste.
The man wasn't even buried yet and in a time of sorrow for his many friends and enthusiastic admirers, Mr. Parrish dumps on him. We wonder if Mr. Parrish died, if a governor, a senator, and 3,000 others would come for a memorial service!
Stephanie and Ed Lewin
Seattle
Pettiness
I'm sure the writer of the Impolitics column ("The Death of St. John," 12/3) lamenting the—god forbid—near canonization of John Stanford meant well, but his comments came off as petty and cruel. What a sad, sorry editorial from what once was a newspaper worth reading. Try not to downgrade everything that has class and value just to make folks think you're hip and jive, 'cause we don't. We think you're jealous and small and mean. For the record, the folks Stanford upset needed to be riled: They were largely naysayers whose brick-like bureaucracy had all but destroyed what was once a nationally acclaimed school system. Stanford had the courage, vision, and charisma to begin to get us back on track. And also for the record: Do some research on the kind of leukemia he was suffering: It's vicious and incurable, no matter what the person is doing with his/her time. Stanford will be missed, far more than your puny attempts at satire will be noticed.
Julianne Seeman
Seattle
Shamefulness
Mr. Parrish—shame on you for that ugly, ill-timed article on John Stanford (Impolitics, "The Death of St. John," 12/3). I was also born in 1938, white and upper-middle-class. I have not come close to the accomplishments of this dear man: born black and poor! He is my hero!
Mary Beth Ballantyne
Seattle
Whorishness
Some of us Stanford critics now feel a little less lonely (Impolitics, "The Death of St. John," 12/3). More important, those few words may accomplish more for Seattle's children—including those few who succumbed to spontaneous grieving (allegedly none in some schools) due to the efforts of our gutless, whorish media—than three-plus years of Stanford mania.
David Blomstrom
via e-mail
Nordstrom generosity
It is hard to imagine a Pacific Northwest family more involved, more caring, more generous with its time and treasure than the Nordstrom family. Literally millions of dollars from the family, their corporation, and their employees have helped feed, house, and clothe countless of our community's needy for many, many years.
So it saddened me to see the family's philanthropic history given such short shrift in a recent article by Mark Worth ("Those Dolefull Nordstroms," 12/10) about Tim Harris' attempts to "embarrass them in public as much as possible" in order to get $500,000 for our city's homeless.
A serious look at the family's and the corporation's enormous contributions to this community would take a special edition of the Weekly. Consider just a few items in recent years, like the low-income housing that Nordstrom will help develop at Stewart Court, the annual Beat the Bridge Race that benefits charity, a United Way campaign in 1985-86 headed by Bruce Nordstrom that raised $28 million, and volunteer leadership for Seattle Goodwill, the Market Foundation, Zion Preparatory Academy, and the YWCA, among many others.
Individual members of the Nordstrom family are among the largest donors to the annual campaign at United Way of King County, which provides a safety net for the community, including many agencies that provide services to the homeless. Many of the company's employees give at leadership levels of more than $1,000 annually. All of that in addition to providing thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenues.
Over the years, United Way of King County has seen firsthand the Nordstrom family and corporate support of our community. It is a better place because of it.
Joanne R. Harrell
President and CEO
United Way of King County
Same old TCI
Anyone with horror stories, hate mail, or bum trips experienced at the hands of (gag) TCI please send them to my e-mail address: Galaxie500JDK@hotmail.com. (See "My TCI Diary," 12/24.) I'm compiling them into a 23-volume encyclopedia of the worst ways to treat customers, with annual updates and a full-color 3-D map of customer woes.
By the way, I'm one of the unlucky, you-snooze-you-lose slobs who has been paying for 35 channels that I have not been receiving for the last several months. Not only that . . . I had no idea that this was happening until I read the Weekly article.
Same old TCI: It smells like crap, it looks like crap, it tastes like crap . . . it must be crap.
Jay Kridner
via e-mail
Shabby treatment
As a low-income housing developer and nonprofit executive director I'm appalled at Mark Worth's shabby treatment of the Housing Resources Group and its effort to preserve Security House ("Stealth Nonprofit," 12/10). It's a shame Worth and the Weekly would make such a misinformed and misdirected effort to criticize a plan that will place the building in capable nonprofit ownership and prevent the rents for current residents from increasing. Why try to blame HRG for making the best of an unstable situation forced on property owners by the federal government's decision to pull the rent subsidy?
