( Joe McQuade ) Joe, I too have returned to Austin. During your college years, I lived in Houston, working as a semi-responsible professional at the Medical Center. Weekends were a different matter. Friends and I packed into a yellow beetle and headed for Austin. We secured accommodations by running down a list of available crash pads until we found someone home. There was always floor space and occassionally a spare mattress. Who cared? Nighttime took us to the smokey Armadilo World Headquarters and places like Soap Creek Saloon. Word got back to my job at Baylor that I had streaked Soap Creek--it might be true. Who can forget the sense of community at hippie hollow, sharing a towel and supplies with strangers, or the pain of sunburned areas that had not previously seen the sun?

Last year I became a full-time student and moved from Houston to a farming community 20 miles South of Austin. I still feel that thrill as I approach Town Lake and like you I don't complain about the changes--I'm just glad to be here.

( Joe McQuade 3/13/02 ) Thank you Joe, I agree that the Andrea Yates jurors need their heads examined.

Apparently their guilty verdict depended on whether or not Andrea knew "right from wrong." Think about this probability and see if that criteria works. Andrea knew that what she was doing was right. She thought she had failed her children and they were incurably flawed and doomed to be with satan. She thought the right thing to do was to send them to heaven.

A person with schizophrenia, by definition, has disordered thought processes. How can we expect such a person to know what is right and wrong to others?

And speaking of others, I have a lot of questions for Russell, who is responsible for the demise of his entire family, as well as his mother who was allegedly on the scene daily.

Why wasn't Andrea allowed to drive a car? Why was she only allowed 3 hours a week (limited to Thursdays) to have some time to herself? What did she do with that time since she didn't bathe for weeks or get to leave the house by herself? Didn't you notice that you wife stunk? How can you continue to stay in that house and bathe in that tub? How could you possibly think it was ok for your 3 1/2 year old to operate a power drill? Why was Andrea's former coworker sent away when she saw the condition Andrea was in and begged you to not wait until the next week to take her to the doctor? Why didn't your mother allow the coworker to take Andrea into the shower and clean her up? Was your mother just as blind (or stupid) as you? When you say that Andrea was failed by the medical and judicial system, why don't you think you should be included? How can you possibly stand on the courthouse steps and make the emotionless statement that you are "back to where you were when you finished college?"

For once I am leaning toward agreeing with Ed U. who doubted the ability of the average person to make an intelligent decision if called to jury duty. I had to get up and walk out of Discount Tires when I heard a woman say, "I would give her the death penalty because my Mother had 5 children and she never drowned any of us."

Kaye Mitchell

( In reply to Steven Conant on 1/10/02 )

I read with interest the posting by Steve Conant on "Rethinking the Death Penalty." Not everyone in prison gets the death penalty and not all the others get life in prison without possibility of parole. So what about the ones who are going to get out? Is prison the appropriate place for rehabilitation efforts on this group?

In working as a case manager, my clients were individuals who were discharged from prison to a drug rehabilitation facility. My case load had two other criteria in addition to being a criminal and homeless. They had a diagnosed major mental illness and a history of drug addiction. I won't tell you that everyone lived happily ever after and didn't return to prison, but there were many who rejoined their families and society, got jobs, found housing and remained clean and sober. I am no longer in the field but still receive letters mailed to my former place of employment. Letters that don't have any reason to suck up.

Steve, the accounting student you mentioned can find work. Instead of saying no one would hire him, I would suggest that he try interviewing at a drug rehabilitation facility where most of the employees are in recovery themselves. I would suggest that he join a 12 step group that is especially for ex-cons and that he network to find out who is hiring. Believe it or not there are business owners who are ex-cons themselves and who will give someone a chance. I would suggest that he consider volunteering somewhere until he was able to prove himself and then wait for the opening.

In addition to job skills, what is wrong with teaching life skills to those who will get out? My client's didn't know how to budget, shop for groceries, find suitable social outlets, navigate the government system for resources like Pell grants and, yes, disability and food stamps. They didn't know how to dress or interview for a job or the importance of keeping their mental health appointments and staying strictly on their medication. Often they needed anger management and grief and loss therapy. Always they needed a 12 step program and sober support group. Lots of them needed religious associations.

Many times I have gotten on the bus with a client to show them how to get around the city in order to keep their mental health appointments. Sometimes being a phone call away prevented old behavior from surfacing. I don't have the records on how much it costs to incarcerate a person, but I can assure you that my salary wasn't much.

I can hear you saying that this is not the population you are talking about- that you are referring to the hard core killers. Fair enough. Keep them in or kill them, which ever is most expedient, but remember that there are many people in prison who can return to society and their families with some help. I don't like seeing the entire prison population painted with such a broad brush anymore than I liked being grounded for what my brother did.

( In reply to Joe McQuade on 1/14/02 )
I think there is more to the smoke and mirrors of Cheney's being in a secure, undisclosed location than our government's fear of his losing his life to terrorists. That is what we are being told told, isn't it? This bizarre depth of security for the vice president is going on while our "president" is showing up front and center at the opening of an envelope.

For the first few weeks, I thought that his being in hiding was to fool the public about his failing health and now I think he is hiding from the Enron scandal. I mean, even when someone is kidnapped we get to see a piece of ear. And I don't buy the idea that he is being hidden because he doesn't know how to shut up.

Kaye Mitchell

Now that we are encouraged to go about our lives normally, fly planes, attend public events and spend lots of money, why is Cheney still in hiding?

( Ed Uthman ) Having suffered personal terrorism in the form of my house being broken into and my computer stolen on thanksgiving eve, I am only now able to reply to Ed, who amazingly has been able to link homosexuality to the oppression of women worldwide.

I could probably name more "straight" than gay designers (Liz Claiborne and Anne Kline come to mind). Ralph Lauren has a wife and kids, but hey.....wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Frankly, it doesn't matter who designes the clothes that the American women chose (operative word) to wear.

I have indeed worn pantyhose and conservative suits in Houston (having lived there for the last 30 years). One does not have to wear this form of dress unless you are a corporate lawyer and in this case the men look pretty uncomfortable too, in their three piece suits, stiff collars and neckties.

In professional dress, I do not wear high heels and neither does some women of note (Ann Richards and Marilyn VosSavant come to mind). While certain costumes are usual for the workplace, I have not heard of women being forced to dress in any particular manner on their time off.

If I wish to enhance or distort my image with rouge and nail polish and plastic parts, and come off looking like a floozy, well I have the freedom to do that. If I decide to be a slave to fashion, that is my choice. Here's your difference.


Now back to the pre-trivialization that I apparently provided by mentioning women's burqas ("fashions" to others) in light of the recent deaths. Seems to me that the oppression of women by the Taliban was a major point in garnering public outcry against the Taliban. Heck, everyone wanted to get Osama, but we needed to know just how terrible the Taliban was too, so here come the pictures of the women being beaten and executed and forced to wear burqas. That image everyday on TV and newspaper was intended to bring outrage against the Taliban. It worked for me.

( In reply to Joe McQuade, Ed Uthman )

Joe McQuade said we went to war to keep the bin Laden network from murdering again. Murdering whom? Just our people, or any people? And is our target solely the bin Laden network, or any terrorist group and "evil-doers?" This is where our war effort gets fuzzy for me.

For Ed Uthman to argue burqua vs bikini is to trivialize the issue. There is a great deal of difference between women choosing to dress modestly and those who are required to stumble about covering themselves from head to toe, thereby losing their identity.

I have a burqua. I wore it on Halloween as the most frightening costume I could imagine. I could not drive, eat or drink. My entire attention was directed at keeping the fabric together so as to not show my wrists.

Thank goodness no young men beat me when I failed. I could not participate in games and stumbled about as though I was sight-impaired (as I was). It was hot and suffocating. Wearing it for three hours wore me out. Put one on and see if it is a choice.

I watched the "liberation" of Afghanistan and was happy to hear the music and see the men getting clean-shaven, but where were the women?

I heard a female reporter say that some were venturing out without a man and that one raised her mask and briefly exposed her face, saying in Persian, "Look at me." The front page of the Austin American Statesman showed a photo of Northern rebel forces poling a raft across a body of water. There were 8 or 10 men crowded on the raft and in the middle was a woman in full cover with mesh veil.

There are your liberators. Same song, second verse for the women.