Category: Letter

Laura Donovan, of Marine on St. Croix, writes: My family and I just returned from a 4 city tour of China. I have sent two photos. The first photo is at the Pearl factory in Guilin, China. Pictured is our guide, Flora and myself, reading the Rake, of course. The second one is at the China Aviation Museum outside of Beijing. From left to right are: Our guide, Grace, myself, my daughter, Lauren and my son, Sean.

Tanis writes: I grew up in Anoka. My entire family enjoys reading your magazine. I thought I would show my devotedness by taking the Rake with me to Clare Island in County Mayo on the big island of Ireland. I have a few photos and was wondering if you would be interested in publishing one of them.

Jon, of Minneapolis, writes: I just got back from visiting some sites along the silk road. This one is in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. The kaylon minaret (or “tower of death”) is in the background. Also pictured: on the great wall near simatai (northeast of beijing), in China.

Marc writes: In between consulting the Oracle in Delphi, Greece, I found time to read the latest issue of The Rake.

I would like to assert my science-geekiness onto “A Tisket, A Tasket,” [Down the Hatch, December], the article about personalized gift baskets. I have been creating handmade Christmas gifts for some time and enjoyed Ms. March’s sentiments on the subject. Additionally, I very much look forward to trying out the Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold cheese, but have not yet run across it. However, it is the paragraph on salt that got me on my scientific high horse. Salt is NaCl, not NaCL. Sodium chloride, salt, is a binary compound of two elements, sodium and chlorine. Sodium is abbreviated Na. Chlorine is abbreviated Cl (the name changes to chloride when combined with other elements). There is only one capital letter per element symbol on the periodic table. Ms. March is referring to a compound with three elements when she wrote of NaCL: Na is sodium, C is carbon, while the abbreviation L is not used for any element.
Janice Rideout
St. Louis Park

I was pleased to read Jennifer Vogel’s exegesis on the religiosity of Eric Enstrom’s “Grace” [“That Old-Time Religion,” December]. It is good for us to have such an abject image of humility in a season–nay, a yearlong culture–of conspicuous consumption. I was disappointed, however, by the omission of the fact that Enstrom’s work, or some tinted, altered, photomechanical descendant of it, is the state photograph of Minnesota. Among our state’s many symbols–loons, pink-and-white lady slippers, blueberry muffins–is this very image, and we are unique in the nation in having an official state photograph. A copy of it hangs in the secretary of state’s office, by order of state legislation. (Whether it’s a gelatin silver print or some non-photographic process is not clear, and deserves further investigation in order to be sure we’re not misrepresenting ourselves or mislabeling our symbols.) We are, officially, a “state of Grace,” and Enstrom’s contested, reconfigured version of it truly does, as Vogel states, “belong to everyone” in the land of 10,000 reflective surfaces. We’re also graced with lots of great photographers, though I don’t believe our god-fearing leaders meant to celebrate this population in their choice of this symbol.
George Slade
Minneapolis

In the Books & Readings section of the November Rake, the columnist discussing Salman Rushdie’s November 10 reading mentions “… more than fifty people around the world have been murdered because of connections to Rushdie.” I’m curious as to the columnist’s sources with regard to that statement. I find that horrifying on any number of counts.
Rick Keeney
Minneapolis

Editor’s note: This figure includes deaths of both Rushdie supporters and protesters. Since his book The Satanic Verses was first published in 1988, Rushdie-related killings have included: five Pakistani demonstrators (1989), a Muslim leader and his deputy in Belgium (1989), twelve protesters in Bombay from police gunfire (1989), Rushdie’s Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi (1991), and 37 from a hotel fire in Turkey to protest Rushdie’s Turkish translator (1993).

In regards to the “art” exhibit at the Walker Art Center, a wire-mesh wooden box with lizards, snakes, scorpions and crickets: As the great poet Alice Walker said, animals exist for their own reasons. They do not exist for our own amusement, entertainment, experimentation or for our “art” exhibits. Sad typical animal exploitation. Did those at the Walker who approved this live animal exhibit consider that this display, the setting, all the people approaching it, might frighten or traumatize the animals? Or is modern art and the new Walker above any trivial concerns of animal suffering? The Walker Art Center needs to be better than Petco or the Como Park Zoo. Human art is everywhere, but human art is not a box of imprisoned reptiles.
Frank Erickson
Minneapolis

Sebastian Kruse (age 2) and his father, Corwin at the starting line of the
2006 Tour de France at Place Kléber in Strasbourg, France.

Hi, Attached is a picture of my son and I reading the RAKE at the Statue of Liberty in NY during our vacation last week. Marcia and Gabe Bethke