LETTERS

OVER FORTY

JUST A NOTE to let you know that you have made my 60th birthday easier.

Now that I have read “The Other Side of 40” (April), I intend to be daring, loving and tough.

Corinne May

Lancaster



DAMN YOU, Jo Brans, why couldn’t you leave me with my illusions. I’m 61 and nobody ever told me I was old already. I thought I had 10 years to go.. .that 70 was the dreaded number! Granted, I have already begun to play the shocking game with my children and grandchildren, figuring practice makes perfect.. .but old? Well, I’m going to stick to my original plan: Seventy is old! I’ll just be a fugitive from the law of averages. How’s that for tough and daring?

Jeanne C. Morgan

Dallas



MORE LESSER

CONCERNING YOUR article in “Inside Dallas” (April), titled “Peter Lesser Wades In,” I found the article to be extremely accurate with the exception of one statement made by Mr. Wade, which I be-lieve deserves a comment. Mr. Wade claims that “only 6 percent of his jury trials ended in acquittals,” making it “the lowest rate in the whole country.”

While that statistic is laudatory as a goal for this office, unfortunately, it is far from the truth. According to figures compiled by the Dallas County District Clerk’s office and the felony and misdemeanor courts, the total conviction rate for all contested trials (in which an accused pled not guilty before a judge or a jury) was only 67 percent in 1981. The actual rate of convictions in jury trials was 76 percent, and there was a 46 percent conviction rate in trials before the court.

The figures are equally distressing for 1980 and 1979, when the overall trial conviction rates were 67.8 percent and 62.1 percent respectively.

Mr. Wade apparently is including guilty pleas, which are impossible to lose, in his conviction statistics. His claim of a 6 percent acquittal rate only goes to show that he still is living in 1952, when that rate may have been an accurate one.

Peter Lesser

Dallas



THE DALLAS LOOK:

POLLYANNA?

I AM greatly disappointed with “The Dallas Look” (March). I feel this is a very poor example of Dallas girls; furthermore, this is not the look they are trying to achieve. No Dallas girl wants to look as if she has “seen the world,” “been used” or is a “tramp.”

The typical Dallas girl is fair-headed with an innocent look about her, wearing neat (matching) clothing when she is seen in public.

You are slaughtering the look of Dallas girls in the eyes of the public and to other cities’ views of Dallas.

Linda Kay Mackay

Your typical Dallas girl



STREET FIGHT

THANK YOU for your profile of both candidates for the 305th Family District Court bench (“A Street Fight For Mc-Clung,” “Inside Dallas,” April). You are to be commended for choosing one of the most important judicial races in Dallas County and attempting to do justice to both candidates. I have no quarrel with Ms. Cunningham’s use of an anonymous quote wherein it was said that 1, like Judge Craig Penfold (Dallas County’s other juvenile court judge), try to figure out why the child went wrong, and that probation officers get along with us for that reason. Judge Penfold and 1 take pride in working hard to understand the problems of youth so that we can better prevent those problems in other youth.

My complaint is directed to Ms. Cunningham’s conclusion that my opponent uses a “punishment” approach, making him “seem more closely aligned with law enforcement.” This statement flies in the face of the facts for two reasons. First, my record as an assistant district attorney and as referee/master of the juvenile court shows without question that I have made rulings reflecting a strong sense of law and order since my first day on the bench.

Secondly, it is I (not my opponent) who has been endorsed by all law-enforcement organizations to make endorsements this year, including the Dallas Police Association, the Dallas County Sheriffs Association and the Garland Police Officer’s Association, which would seem to rather handily diffuse Ms. Cunningham’s argument.

Dan Street

Candidate for Judge,

305th Family District Court



EDITOR’S PAGE

YOUR “EDITOR’S PAGE” remarks consistently delight; I’m sure I’m not the only D subscriber that ranks your department as the most entertaining in the book. After reading your March musings, however, I felt the urge to point out that Roger Staubach, not Bob Lilly, was the MVP of Super Bowl VI (the one in which Lilly – and Larry Cole -did indeed chase Bob Griese all over the Orange Bowl).

Russ Pate

Dallas



I CANT IMAGINE why your art director goes to so much trouble and expense to get the right “cover person” (“Editor’s Page,” April). My subscription label is always stuck right smack across his (her) face.

Patti Skelton

Irving



I ENJOYED the “Editor’s Page” in the February issue about writers. I studied mathematics in college and emerged able to write proofs using complete sentences. Alas, I was neither a mathematician nor a writer. (The odds of entering college and emerging four years later as a mathematician would astound you.)

I’m glad you’re still looking for the 30 undiscovered magazine writers. Don’t forget, though, that the aspiring writer adores reading. He buys your magazine, he loves words. He needs to read. Whether he ever writes for you or not, he’s the reason you can live on it.

By the way, unless the Las Vegas casinos do something besides slanting the odds in their favor, 1 don’t think it matters “how long it’s been since the house has been beaten.” You might research it. And next time you write about writing, you might even mention that the writer “other people will pay to read” may not understand what he’s writing about.

There are those of us who have reduced our dream to this: hoping to see our name on the “Letters” page.

Linda Sue Ball

Austin



D’s DOZEN

THE WRITERS OF “Best Restaurants” (“D’s Dozen,” March) and similar articles withhold information essential to the well being of those of us inclined to follow their footsteps to restaurants and hotels where we may enjoy the culinary delights they recommend, but at the expense of adding pounds of weight we can ill afford.

Of a certainty they are either hyperactive sub-adults with exotic taste buds, jumbo copies of homo or they have some secret method for disposing of those zillions of calories absorbed in pursuit of their research.

Which is it, D?

Hal Wallis

Dallas



YOUR “DINING OUT” section is a comedy – I don’t know who wrote the article, but I do not blame him for not signing his name. If Turtle Cove is number seven, I hope I never am forced to eat in numbers eight, nine, 10, 11 or 12.

Jim Gordon

College Station