Letters to the Editor

What You Say

You begin [Editor's Letter, "Smoke," Duane Swierczynski, June 21, 2007] by talking about how peaceful you are when you grill; you end it by having a fantasy of persecution leading to your stabbing someone with a fork. I'd hate to think of what you're like when you are not peaceful.

Comparing a City Council vote for a smoking ban, that took much work by many factions in a democracy, to the Nazi regime? The lumping together of harmless stuff like guitar playing with cancer-causing smoking? The murder rate (which often is committed by just the kind of self-righteous, self-pitying, revenge fantasizers who have access to guns as well as sharp forks) and the problems with City Council? I feel bad for you. Your wishes to poison yourself and family with various forms of carcinogens and secondhand smoke are interrupted by your fantasy of someone stopping you. You need help.

David Greenwald
Via e-mail

As a music lover and a believer in First Amendment rights, I would like to be on the side of the musicians, but I can't [Cover Story, "Are These Guys Bothering You?" Will Dean, June 21, 2007]. Not after having to endure in the park bagpipes, drums, trumpets, horns and other horrors � and not always hearing just one such "artist" at a time. What makes these people think they have the right to practice their instruments or make money playing them right next to those of us who come to the park to relax and who might have altogether different musical tastes?

This is not an issue to be decided by rallying and gathering signatures. Even in the highly unlikely event that it could be shown that 80 percent of people in the park enjoy or don't mind hearing accordions or electric guitars there on a daily basis, it would be wrong to subject the remaining 20 percent to such punishments. The ban on playing unsolicited music in the park could perhaps be fine-tuned but it must not be repealed.

Ben M. Joseph
Center City

Because humans are not gifted with ears that can be closed, any musician who decides to play in a public space is unilaterally deciding that everyone around must either listen to them or leave. While the musician on the cover, with his electric guitar not plugged into anything (!), probably won't be bothering anyone, I daresay if he was pictured connected to an amp, or replaced by a bagpiper, trombone quartet or six conga drummers, reader's responses to the cover's question would likely be more ambiguous. Music, like sex, should be consensual. While there should obviously be training for the police, the best compromise is to let street musicians perform hassle-free on the busy streets and leave the parks as spots of refuge for those who desire peace and tranquility.

Jay Krush
Center City

I'm 15 now and I've been playing in Rittenhouse Square since I was 8 or 9 years old. After [recently] performing for a private party in an apartment on the square, my quartet (www.4tetseraphina.com) stopped in the [park] to play for half an hour around dusk.

We enjoyed the contrast between performing for wealthy art patrons upstairs and performing for tourists, joggers, businesspeople on their way home and homeless people. After each piece we received welcome applause from the small, casual crowd that gathered. We consider our impromptu performances as natural as free speech. And we enjoy the performances of other musicians in the square, as well. The beauty of this park is that unplanned, unscripted art encounters happen every day.

Caeli Smith
Via e-mail

I've been playing guitar for years down at Rittenhouse Square. Everything was cool until Robby [Torres] and his crew showed up last year and started singing too loud, drowning out everybody else in the park. Almost every night and every weekend, they'd be down there. Now him and his buddies got the rest of us banned.

I don't miss hearing him sing but I sure do miss all the other players he chased away. Thanks Robby. Hit the road, Jack, and don't ya come back no more, no more. Hit the road, Robby, and don't ya come back no more.

Tarden Sicovitz
Frankford

If Philadelphia wants to be the cultural iconic city it is striving to be, we need to let our passion, creativity and individual identity shine. Music in the park, streets and subways just brings out feelings of creativity, feelings of something happening in a city, feelings of a positive environment.

It is just a shame that the narrow-minded and the negative always seems to prevail in Philadelphia. It is sad that one person in a park can stop all that creativity, all that passion and all that music. And for what purpose in the grand scheme of it?

Michael D'Antonio
Philadelphia 

[Slant, "The Playboy Defense," Amy Jersild, June 21, 2007] raises excellent points about the stereotype that people bestow on rapists � deviants lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce. ... But, I find it hard to accept that a young man needs a reminder that it is a crime to violate another person's body without consent under any circumstances. If guys really "mean no harm," then they already know the "boundaries" without a set of instructions.

Gloria C. Endres
South Philadelphia

[Slant, "The Playboy Defense," Amy Jersild, June 21, 2007] is riddled with illogic. For her own ideological convenience, she tries to squeeze the public discourse over the recent serial-rape trial into a dichotomy of "bad" vs. "good" men/women. But it really shows that considerably more complex issues were considered by the jury as well as observers of the trial.

For instance, she claims that "media attention surrounding [the] case ... perpetuates the myth that accused rapists are usually monsters" because the defendant's attorney called him "a playboy, not a rapist." This is nonsense. Does Jersild doubt that a woman accused of embezzlement might be described by her advocate as "a loving mother, not a criminal"? Would anyone think this implies that one can't be both? Of course not.

That the jury didn't believe in such a dichotomy is demonstrated by the very question Jersild laments: Whether one who is legally intoxicated can consent to sex. Obviously, if the defendant's character were all that mattered to them, they wouldn't have bothered to ask this.

But Jersild is too busy twisting definitions to notice. She claims the state's rape law answers the question, when its actual language is "engag[ing] in sexual intercourse with a complainant ... who is unconscious or where the person knows the complainant is unaware that the sexual intercourse is occurring." This is plainly a stronger criterion than mere intoxication, which is defined by a blood alcohol level. Everyone knows one can be "drunk" without being unconscious or unaware.

She similarly twists the issues when claiming the verdict implies that "if one consents to drinking, one consents to sexual intercourse." More nonsense. What it implies is that if one consents to ingesting alcohol or another mind-altering substance, as opposed to being given it covertly, then whatever one subsequently chooses to do is also consensual. This is only logical since, after all, that might be why one chose to ingest it in the first place. Jersild may consider this a questionable choice � one she wouldn't make herself � but who is she to deny it to others? And that's effectively what one does if one makes others, simply for cooperating with such choices, subject to felony prosecution.

But there's an even more blatant inconsistency here: Jersild repeatedly poses acquaintance rape as a matter of "poor judgment made poorer by substance use." Whoa! Wasn't she just suggesting that any woman who's intoxicated is incapable of consenting to sex? Then how could a man who's likewise intoxicated be responsible for subjecting her to it? Can we say "double standard"?

A female friend of long standing has described to me how, on two separate occasions, she witnessed "enthusiastically consensual" sex in a party or group-dating situation, only to have the women involved complain to her the next day of how they'd been "raped."

Ideologues may prefer not to know about it, but cognitive dissonance can be a powerful motive for false accusations in this area (and even more so for informal claims, which might account for the disparity between survey data and actual prosecutions). While Jersild urges women not "to abdicate responsibility for their own safety," she might also urge them to take responsibility for their own sexuality, and accept that it may sometimes take them places they hadn't expected to go.

Eric Hamell
North Philadelphia

I am the owner of Café Barcelona, I am writing to say I was shocked to see the harshness of the article; the rudeness of the title [Food, "The Pain in Spain," Elisa Ludwig, June 14, 2007]. I am sure you are aware of how such a negative review can harm a business: Mine has been barely open for one year. I am a sole proprietor with no investment backing behind me, simply trying to pass to my customers the food and recipes I have always naturally enjoyed in my family and my country.

I admit there are faults, days where mistakes are made. When that happens I do everything possible for me to do about it. I do care for [my business]. Most of my customers leave my cafe very pleased and with generous praise for their experience.

I am not sure the type of food I serve is understood. And because it concerns me, I'd like to set the record straight. What I do is traditional Catalan cooking. Nothing to compare to the "many flashier Spanish restaurants now vying for Philadelphia diners' affections" mentioned in the article.

For the ones who care: Spain is a country of regions. Each region has its particularity, traditions and culture. So diverse in its landscape that for centuries the food and dishes have developed into part of people's identity. For me, as someone from Catalunya it is not possible to cook as someone from Andalucia or Galicia. It's impossible simply because the land and climate has affected how and what people prepare and eat since very remote times.

My only inclusion of other regional cooking is from La Rioja, because my husband is from there and I have learned from observing and spending summers there. Another inclusion is the Basque country, because I have had friends there for a long time and have spent and shared so many moments with them, going out and eating. Actually, the only formal cooking training I have is in traditional Basque cuisine.

So, my food comes from what I am. My identity: A background of years, days, hours absorbing culture, techniques, traditions and tastes that have been imprinted. In a global world with unthinkable fusions oriented to please the vast majority, I go back to my roots.

Therefore, if I am allowed to send a comment back to the writer, I have to say that I would never marinate Manchego, less if it's sharp; that I do not use some of the ingredients she seemed to find in my dishes, such as cinnamon or pesto; people really like the paella and my desserts are not powdery or milky. And, by the way, it is not "soccarat", it's "socarrat."

Restaurant owners are not personal chefs, and someone might like something that someone else doesn't. That's why you make choices. But unfortunately, food has become a show, something still not taken seriously. The food in schools [and articles about] obesity and epidemic-level diabetes don't get a weekly full page in newspapers. Eating is only seen as having a good time. This is a constant struggle and problem.

Montserrat Galiano
Café Barcelona