Author: rakemag

As one of the many who are annoyed by telemarketing calls, I am not annoyed enough to support a statewide ban on them [“Unlisted Numbers,” September]. The telephone is only one of many vehicles that businesses use to market their wares; I am also annoyed with billboards and commercials, but advertising makes many things we enjoy possible, like TV shows, news, radio programs, and an awareness of products and services we would otherwise not know about. For some people, it’s the opportunity to buy a timeshare or get a discount on aluminum siding. There are lots of ways to reduce the number of telemarketing calls. Don’t buy products or services from businesses that sell your contact information. Get an unlisted number. Add that great feature to your phone service that asks solicitors to remove your name from the calling list and hangs up. But most important, it’s silly to make a law forbidding something that is “annoying” — especially something that can be easily modified by the one who is annoyed. Using the telephone is optional. If folks don’t want calls during dinnertime, the most reasonable thing to do is take the phone off the hook, turn the ringer off, or let their voice mail pick it up until they’re finished eating. It’s simple. I’d rather see our state invest that money in education and community development.
Rebecca St. Martin
Robbinsdale

I was very disappointed to read your article regarding child custody [“Dealing From the Bottom,” September]. As an attorney who practices exclusively in the area of family law, I felt that the article did a great disservice to attorneys, the court, mediators, and child psychologists who try to assist couples in resolving their parenting issues. I also believe it provided misleading information to the public. First, it is the rare attorney who encourages her client to “say every horrible thing that you can come up with about the other person.” Most attorneys know that the courts discourage these types of statements/affidavits in custody cases. Experienced family law attorneys know that if you start off a case in this manner, there is little hope of reaching an amicable resolution on any issue. A custody evaluation is only one part of the evidence that a court considers in making a determination of child custody in those few cases where parents do not reach agreement. Minnesota statute 518.17 lists thirteen criteria for the court to consider when making a decision. While I think most attorneys and judges would agree that the custody evaluation is important, I don’t know of any judges in the metro area that rely solely on the custody study. Also, it should be noted that many litigants agree to having one psychologist do the study (and many psychologists will only do a study if both parents hire them). Further, it is rare that a custody study would cost $25,000. I also found it interesting that the reporter only cites out-of-state psychologists and “experts” for her proposition that psychologists are “hired guns.” While that may be true in other states, the custody evaluators that I have worked with in the metro area do their very best to remain neutral. While some of the evaluators have preferences on different issues, they are diligent in obtaining accurate information and they present the information in a neutral and unbiased fashion. I wonder why the reporter did not talk to a single psychological expert in the metro area. I appreciated the information on collaborative law; I am a collaborative law attorney. However, the reporter’s dismissive statement regarding mediation does a disservice to the alternative dispute resolution process, which is very advanced in Minnesota. Mediation is not a “pit stop” on the way to court. I am sure if the reporter had taken the time to research the issue, speak to the chief judges in family court, and interview some respected mediators, she would have found out otherwise. The people getting divorced are in charge, from the criteria they use in hiring an attorney, to the process they want to use to resolve their case—litigation, mediation, or collaborative law. My advice to people is not to listen to horror stories, or rely on unresearched articles, but to decide how they want their divorce to proceed, and then do the research to find a competent attorney to assist them in reaching their goals.

Kathleen M. Picotte Newman Minneapolis

Thank you for the extremely thorough, gender-neutral, and well-researched article on child-custody problems. These problems are further damaging already fractured families. While I disagree with many of the opinions of Sarah Ramsey, you did a good job of balancing her comments with another expert opinion, to provide one of the most impartial articles describing this problem that I have ever read. You were able to take the emotion out of it and create an “intellectual” look at the problem. Your analysis was right on target.

Molly K. Olson
executive director
Center for Parental Responsibility
Roseville

I read Frank Jossi’s piece on the golfing industry [“The Missing Links,” September] with particular interest in the “Youth Only” or “Youth With an Adult” facility at the National Sports Center in Blaine. That is what we were promised back in 1998 by proponents of the project. Yes, a “youth only facility,” which was to potentially host a PGA Tour event by the year 2002. I would ask Jossi if he is certain this eighteen-hole facility is for youth only. According to the MASC, the eighteen-hole course is their “Events” course. Three years ago, the First Tee people described the nine-hole course as the “youth only” course. However, according to the EIS report on the Anoka County Airport released earlier this year, the MASC dropped that nine-hole course back in 2000, citing wetland issues. I have been involved with this sham since 1998. Representative Phil Krinkie did the right thing by asking for an investigation into this matter. After all, if you had 450 acres to build a 270-acre project, why would you spend $2 million to buy up a 75-acre sod farm nowhere near where the golf course was being built? Especially when there already was a $1.7 million appropriation to purchase the same land?

Bill Folkes
Coon Rapids

A popular myth, perpetuated even in China, is that the Great Wall is the only man-made structure that can be seen from outer space or, some will say, seen from the moon [“Red-Handed,” Letters, September]. For an object to be visible from a distance, it needs both size and visual contrast with its surroundings. The Great Wall has neither. As for size, at the most it is only twenty-five feet wide; many four- or six-lane highways are far wider. As for visual contrast, the wall is made of mostly gray stone surrounded by gray rock and brownish vegetation. Many highways are whitish concrete passing through green farm fields and no one claims to see them from space. If there was a man-made structure visible from a great distance, it would more likely be something like the space shuttle assembly building in Florida, the Superdome or the Metrodome, or even a large airport. While I’m at it, my bet is that reader Sam Woelm is a better Photoshop artist than traveler. I’ll take his T-shirt.

Tom Peterson
Edina

A number of readers wrote to correct us on the Great Wall paradox. Science tells us that many man-made objects are visible from outer space, while none can be seen from the surface of the moon. And we think Peterson is onto something with the Photoshop conspiracy theory, too. That photo is looking more fake every time we look at it! But we’d still send Mr. Woelm a T-shirt for his industriousness.—Editors

I enjoyed reading your new column “Sex & the Married Man” [“Should Married Men Go to Strip Clubs?,” September]. I couldn’t agree more with you, and I’m tired of my fellow Gen X males pooh-poohing strip clubs as if they were interactive tours of livestock slaughterhouses. Sure, we all went to the Alan Alda School of Sensitive Men back in the eighties, only to find that women still need us to kill spiders in the house. What a shock! Women want us to be sensitive, but macho enough to make them weak in the knees. Welcome to the Love Lottery! Oh, yes, here come the admonitions from women. But I find among my friends, and, frankly, in myself, men’s ability to accept the faults and shortcomings of a mate more than women. After the “honeymoon” phase comes the ever-present mental check list of every little personality quirk that sends you off the deep end. Unfortunately, one of those quirks we have is enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman. Every beautiful woman. But it doesn’t keep us from massaging your feet, making you dinner, and yes, killing those damn spiders with our big manly shoes.

Evan Halquist
Shoreview

I beg to differ with Stuart Greene’s opinion that all married men just want to see more naked women. Granted, some men are just not cut out for marriage, and for those men, who cares how many strip clubs they go to? But if a man is happy with his marriage and his sex life, he shouldn’t have any need to go to a strip club (my husband agrees). And if he’s married and does go to these places, it’s my observation that these types of men usually have a lot of baggage and other issues that no marriage could fix by itself.  

Amy Farrar
Mound

Stuart Greene’s column filled me with frustration. I feel like he missed the point in his attempt to break down the issue from a man’s perspective. If a woman has a negative reaction to her husband going to a strip club, then he has a choice to make and consequences that follow it. Stuart has chosen to honor his wife’s feelings (admittedly only because he’d suck at covering up a trip to the club), which is good for his marriage, but it seems he’s fed up with the other consequences—unfulfilled desire and the accompanying guilt. If we follow Stuart’s logic, the stress caused by guilty desire must be alleviated by going to the source of the problem: wives. After all, men’ s lust for endless naked women is a biological inevitability. If only the wives could understand and drop that priggish judgment. What a cop-out! Sometimes in a committed relationship, out of two things you want, you can only have one, because of an ultimatum one of the partners has made. You have to choose what your partner wants, let go of the other thing, and move on. So to all the married men out there, the next time your wife crumbles or angers at the image of you soaking up a lap dance, don’t take it as an attempt to squelch your animal instincts. See it as a challenge to take your relationship to the next level and to explore all the mysteries in her you have yet to uncover!

Lisa Watson
Minneapolis

Stuart Greene’s snickering about young women strippers—many of them teenagers battling addiction and depression—made me heartsick. I hope Greene grows to care more about other people’s children, and less about his poor buddies who are “tired of feeling guilty.” I’m sorry to see The Rake publish this sort of heartless drivel. I want to encourage Greene to truly educate himself about what circumstances drive young women into those jobs.

Leslie Ball
Minneapolis

Married guys? They have the best chance of enjoying clubs, not blowing their money, not getting hung up on the dancers or confused with the relationship, and best able to act later on the arousal with a partner. Married men prove their commitment every day, and there should be no delusions about men’s arousal patterns. Biologically, we are meant to mate with any healthy woman of child-bearing age we meet. All who don’t accept this are in serious denial. Noticing a beautiful body is being human, not being a slobbering pig.

Name Withheld by Request
Brooklyn Park

I must say I am relieved at Stuart Greene’s honesty. As a happily married Gen X woman, I agree with your take, and I am not at all offended that my husband finds pleasure in looking at perfect strangers, perfectly naked. I joined him once for an outing to a strip club and actually found myself just as aroused as my husband. I think women should learn to embrace their sexuality instead of bashing men for being so comfortable with theirs. Of course, I understand that years of social differences must be overcome first. I hope women read your articles and gain a greater understanding of their significant others. Keep up the honesty, some of us are not afraid. I’m happily married and looking at porn myself.

Jenn Stone
Minneapolis

“Is 911 a Joke?” [August] was not fair to Fire Chief Rocco Forte. He has been given a raw deal by both the governor and the city fathers and mothers. They cut his budget and told him to deal with it. He has done his best to keep suppression forces adequately staffed. There is much more to running a fire department than many realize, particularly with prevention, education, investigation, and code enforcement along with firefighting and EMS duties. He has made several solid appointments and raised the level of cooperation with the police department. During the last several years, the arson squad, comprised of four Minneapolis firefighters and two Minneapolis police sergeants, has made a significant number of arrests. We ended the run of the Hodgeman brothers’ serial arson spree and resolved the twenty-four-year-old murder of two Minneapolis firefighters. This is an area of the fire department where Forte deserves credit.
Sgt. Sean McKenna
Arson Squad
Minneapolis Police Department