Payback time
Dave Cieslewicz is trying to reason with the schoolyard bully who's stealing his lunch money. There's a time for reasoning and a time for fighting back. You want a train? Use the Republican divide-and-conquer strategy against them ("You Thought Losing High-Speed Rail Was Bad?" 7/24/2014).
Gasoline taxes paid by the residents of Milwaukee and Dane counties go into a statewide fund that builds highways all over the state. The gasoline we burn while we are sitting in traffic jams on the Beltline is paying for beautiful Interstate-style highways (with very few cars on them) in rural areas.
Residents of urban counties like ours should demand that money collected here will be spent here. If our country cousins are unwilling to pay for a train they'll never ride on, then we must refuse to pay for paved roads we'll never drive on. We can use that money for improved roadbuilding materials and techniques, so that our roads don't have to be torn back up every few years.
Pete Formiller
Dave Cieslewicz's train article was well done. However, one important point missed is the multiplier effect of those dollars lost. They might have been spent locally multiple times; the infusion of money into our economy could have approached a value of 10 times the money lost. That's a lot of moolah!
Mark Resch, Ripon
Co-sleeping
I want to thank Isthmus for Ruth Conniff's article "Confessions of a Co-Sleeper" (7/18/2014). I see the billboards every day on my drive to work and feel so conflicted about them. I hope this opens the eyes of the public and that these billboards will come down or tell the full story.
I co-sleep with my 9-month-old daughter. I breastfeed her, and co-sleeping feels natural. At first I would lie to my pediatrician about co-sleeping because it was a no-no. After my own research, I realized that if done safely, co-sleeping is better for a child's development. This article gave women a voice. It gave me a voice.
Jennifer Lynn Raziq
"...I am a pediatrician, and I tend not to get too down on my parents who choose to co-sleep... But to pretend as though the risk isn't there is unacceptable and does nothing to help parents make the best choices for themselves or for their babies."
Erica Andrist (via Facebook)
"This is beautifully written. Amen to everything she says! We shouldn't discourage co-sleeping, we should merely show families how to do it safely."
Fran Uselman-Harris (via Facebook)
Rotten Tuna review
Your review of Greater Tuna clearly shows that you are an expert at scrambling together insults and sweeping generalizations about others who actually have talent ("Southern Satire," 7/18/2014). It also shows that you have absolutely no idea of the work and dedication that goes into these plays. I seriously doubt that you could portray even one of these characters convincingly, write a play about any subject whether comedic or dramatic, or hold your own in any theatrical setting.
Mari LaFore
