Letters to the Editor

A special thanks to Jim Dulzo and the Metro Times for the recent cover story on Marianne Williamson and her work at the Church of Today in Warren ("Radical spirit," MT, May 9-15). I'll never forget the December night a few years back when church officials announced they had searched for a new spiritual director and had selected her. We're so lucky and honored to have someone of her caliber here in Warren.

It's one thing to see Marianne Williamson lecturing once a year; it's another to have the pleasure of her company and insight on a weekly basis. We've learned that she is a very creative, compassionate and challenging woman. On a personal level, she's inspired me to take a close look at my own beliefs and attitudes, and has also inspired me to perform volunteer work that I otherwise never would have considered. —Mitch Hotts, [email protected], Roseville

Are we nuts?

Between Liz Langley’s column ("Higher power failure," MT, May 9-15) and the cover story on the Church of Today (of which I have been a proud member for 11 years), you have me wondering. I consider myself rooted fairly firmly in Christianity, but sometimes wonder if someone new to the religion, hearing that one church or denomination (someone else's) is the only arbiter of truth, reading about bombings of abortion clinics, being taught that the only acceptable form of birth control is abstinence and given a "ticket to Hell" while in line to see a movie, might consider Christians a bunch of nuts!

Thanks for a great newspaper. —Joe Stricker, Detroit

Kylleen’s justice

I would like to thank you very much for running the story on Kylleen Hargrave-Thomas ("Hanging by a nail," MT, April 25-May 1). Congratulations to Katie Merx for writing such a clear, unbiased and factual article. Now I truly hope that there will be a major impact not only on the community but also on the legal system in order that justice can finally prevail. My husband and I have known Kylleen for about five years, since we started visiting her in prison as outreach volunteers. Although we don't personally know all the facts about the case, we have become strongly convinced of her innocence, based on many in-depth discussions over these past years.

We now live in Germany and can unfortunately no longer visit Kylleen regularly. However if there is any way you know of that we could help, please let us know — we would be very glad to do anything possible to help Kylleen. —Birgit Billau, Tuebingen, Germany

Rational rapture

Thank you for the fabulous article on ecstasy in the Metro Times ("Rapture and fears," MT, May 2-8). It's exactly what I (and this city) needed after all the horrid scare pieces, as it showed me that there are some rationally thinking journalists out there after all, and nicely laid out all the neutral (but realistic) arguments for people that might have bought into the hype until now. Hopefully people will think a little more critically about the issue from now on. Thanks again for a very encouraging piece. —Doris Payer, director, DanceSafe Detroit, Ann Arbor

Alive and well

I enjoyed Adam Druckman’s column on why the Web won't die ("Death of dot-com?," MT, May 2-8) and completely agree with it.

He wrote a column about our Web site — urbanideas.com — last year. We've celebrated our first anniversary and are alive and doing well, with well over 12,000 users per month — not bad for a narrowly focused site such as ours!

Perhaps one reason we're surviving is that we turned away from the lure of venture capital and kept things simple. Our overhead is low (and a lot cheaper than newsprint) and we have bona fide local advertisers who are reaching their target market. We believe in the Web and believe that it will survive — even if the economy really does go bad, we're a very inexpensive alternative for local advertising and web design. —Suzy Sherman, editor, urbanideas.com, Royal Oak

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