Letter writer no conservative
Imagine my shock to pick up my weekly Isthmus to find a letter headlined, "Blaska is no conservative" (Letters, 4/22/11). Its scrivener, Gregor Mieder, claimed to be "a sort-of-conservative myself" and therefore well positioned to determine who shall pass through the eye of his exacting needle.
Nobody I know is familiar with this Mieder man. So, I asked myself (in a rare moment of introspection), could he be a progressive provocateur? A sleeper agent whose mission was to discredit a leading voice of Madison conservatism?
Even us conservatives know how to use Facebook. Gregor Mieder is the sort of conservative who lists, among his Facebook friends, the Green Party's Ben Manski. The sort whose list of favorites includes The Rachel Maddow Show, the International Socialist Review, Noam Chomsky and the UW Teaching Assistants union.
In other words, Gregor Mieder is the sort of fellow who would fake being a conservative if it helped his leftist cause. Instead, he hurt it.
David Blaska
Union South gets it Wright - and wrong
Your cover article "Union South Gets It Right" (4/22/11) reads like a report on a Frank Lloyd Wright building. You wrote "students and designers agreed on a term to describe what the new Union South should be: 'an organic building.'"
Wright coined the term "organic architecture" more than 100 years ago, and the new building follows his principles: bringing the outside in, with lots of natural lighting, and the use of undisguised natural materials, preferably local.
The shape of the new Union is what Wright called a "solar hemicycle," a segment of a circle with the inside facing south and featuring lots of glass. The Jacobs II house in Madison (1943) uses the same design.
John Powell
I agree with your cover story that the new Union South is nice architecturally and aesthetically. But it will be disappointing if the food selection doesn't improve. I was hoping for a nice cafeteria with daily entrees, a salad bar with a choice of fresh vegetables and fruit, and some good soups and sandwiches.
Instead, the only choices now are grilled chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza and a daily pasta. In other words, it's just airport and bar food.
Brian Shore
