WW welcomes letters to the editor via mail, e-mail or fax. Letters must be signed by the author and include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Preference will be given to letters of 250 words or less. Public Art Ache Karen E. Steen's "Saved by a Prayer" piece [WW, July 28, 199]) was the last straw. After countless articles in every city paper on the plight of these Homeric pillars, this piece finally brought home the utterly hypocritical (and seemingly totally unconscious) position of so many "lovers of public art" in Portland. Those old column paintings under the Lovejoy Ramp, nice as they may be, are nothing more or less than graffiti. What I'd like to know is, where's the outcry every time a contemporary piece of public art gets scrubbed by a demolition crew, an over-zealous neighborhood committee or a city cleaning squad? If the only difference between the two is that one is 50 years old and the other 50 days, that doesn't speak well of the foresight of "art lovers." But of course that's not the only, or even main, difference. The real issue is the aesthetics and the cultures that the different kinds of graffiti represent and speak for--the fact that one is seen as harmless, pretty and an affirmation of the values of those great old ancient Greeks; the other is seen as threatening, ugly and a creation of people who threaten these values. While the older pieces couldn't be more gentle, romantic and benign, more contemporary pieces are vilified as unsightly gang-related messes of misdirected teen angst. In discussions on contemporary graffiti in Portland there seems to be a total lack of discrimination between simple tags (often of minimal aesthetic value and often put on private property) and larger, more complex pieces (often extremely well-composed and executed, often on dreary, dilapidated public property like Stefopoulos' art). This latter form of graffiti is internationally recognized as a valid and vital art form, one that lives in galleries (since the early 1980s) as well as on the street where it was born and continues to thrive. It's high time for this city's art lovers to wake up to the rest of the beauty and creativity around them. While the old Greek's pieces are definitely worth saving, there's a lot more public art out there that shouldn't be destroyed so thoughtlessly either. Ezra Ereckson Southeast 28th Avenue Shrink Thyself Dr. Leigh Dolin's complaint about physicians needing to "be big enough that we couldn't get pushed around by the hospitals and the HMOs" is ironic, given his track record of championing managed care ["The Incredible Shrinking Doctor," WW, Aug. 4, 1999]. Three years ago, Dolin actively campaigned against Measure 35, which, if passed, would have banned physician capitation as a payment method in Oregon. He was a constant fixture in the media and quoted at every turn. He went so far as to write an opinion piece in the January 18, 1996 The Oregonian, in which he claimed, "The result for the individual patient is that managed care is increasingly recognized as promoting better care...Managed care focuses on providing the best care for a population," he wrote. "Managed care, unlike fee-for service, makes health promotion reimbursable." Having suddenly lost my physician due to HealthFirst's collapse, I am in no mood to cut Dolin any slack now that he has been hoisted by his own petard. "Perhaps in early attempts at managed care," the good doctor wrote three and a half years ago, "there were some insurance administrators who were a bit heavy-handed. But even insurance companies can learn." Unfortunately for all of us, insurance companies seem to have a much faster learning curve than certain members of the medical profession. Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan North Missouri Avenue What's Faith Got To Do With It? In the article by Nigel Jaquiss entitled "The Great Cattle Caper," [WW, July 28, 1999], there is a line referring to Jay Hoyt: "At the center of the con is a silver-tongued Mormon..." Searching the article for any relevance of Hoyt's religion, I could find none. Substitute "silver-tongued Jew." How does that sound to your ears? Such blatant bigotry has no place in your newspaper. Your readers are owed an apology. Steve Levy Southwest Nebraska Street You Had To Be There As an activist parent who is very involved in school-funding issues, I couldn't let Steven Novick's letter on school funding ["Funding Arithmetic," WW, July 28, 1999] go unanswered. It was clear from Novick's letter that he was miles away from the school-funding battles that took place in the state Capitol. Otherwise he wouldn't have questioned Rep. Randall Edwards' leadership on this issue. When quantifying leadership on school-funding matters, I'm mystified as to how Novick can totally ignore the most important school-funding votes this session. Those were the votes on locking up the tobacco-settlement money. Edwards wrote the alternative bill that would have freed up $150 million of the tobacco money for schools--the amount needed to get the total school funding to the no-cuts level of $4.95 billion. Edwards' alternative bill to fund schools was the bill that the Republican leadership had to fight the hardest to kill. They failed to kill his bill on the first try (it received 30 votes). On that vote, Edwards deserves credit for not only rounding up every one of his Democratic colleagues but also for securing four Republican votes. Did anyone else accomplish that this session? Novick seems to have some other agenda. If it is to eliminate tax exemptions, that's a legitimate area of debate. He should leave the analysis of leadership on school-funding issues to those who were actually engaged in the debate. Andi Jordan Lake Oswego - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published August 11, 1999