Letters

I will be looking forward to the return of her razor-edged investigative reporting.

Enjoy, Ms. Miller.
Sheila McKay
Dallas

My wife and I are avid readers of your fine paper. We cannot wait every week to go down to Bookstop and pick up a weekly Dallas Observer, and the first thing we look at on the front page is what Laura Miller has written in the weekly paper. As far as we are concerned, you have the most prolific investigative journalist that we have seen in the past 50 years in Dallas.

In picking up the last issue of your paper and looking at the front page, I was shocked and saddened to see that Miller is trading in her typewriter for toilet training. The first thought that came to mind was that Miller had written an article about our Honorable Mayor Ron Kirk, and I thought maybe this was her reason. But reading the whole article, I realized the reason. Having raised four daughters, I can honestly attest to what a mother goes through in raising three children.

One of my daughters is an excellent real estate agent with a husband and three children under five years old. She also gave up her job for the baby--who is only three months old--and hopes she will eventually go back to her profession.

I hope Miller will come back and write again on what is going on behind closed doors in Dallas.

Shirley and Leo Laufer
Dallas

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy reading your paper every week and have admired Laura Miller's contributions to it. But the "Mommie Dearest" article was a bit much. The basic story line--working mom chooses to temporarily leave her career to raise her kids--is hardly unique, and its content would have been banal but for the hyperbole employed in Miller's description of her life as a crusading reporter and her agony in leaving that behind for a while. And, as if the article wasn't too long by half anyway, making the last third of it a non-musical paean to the Observer was even more self-indulgent by you than the main story was to Miller.

What editorial courage! Now I know what Miller means when she says the Observer "isn't afraid to tell it like it is in this town." But how is hype like this different from the pomposity you so frequently (and rightly) decry in the Morning News?

Charlie Appler
Dallas

Say it ain't so! Dallas losing Laura Miller is like Gotham City losing Batman. Let's hope the sabbatical of America's toughest, hardest-working journalist is truly only temporary.

William McEwen
Arlington

Case Closed
Being as I am one of those hayseed rubes from Fort Worth and not being culturally educated and all, I'm sure your editor will have to go over this here letter to make sure it's correct and all.

See, I picked up this here Dallas Observer in downtown Fort Worth at the culturally devoid Sundance Square on New Year's Eve, and just happened to come upon this here article called "Buzz" (probably what you were doing when you wrote this trash). Sorry, I guess that was a little out of line, even for a rube.

When I read about the "culture shock" from that there Nordstrom experiment I just had to write and apologize. Not!

I can say that maybe Nordstrom has realized something that you uppity, hoity toity, Dallasites should think about--hayseed rubes and Skoal-addled folks spend real honest-to-goodness American currency. Oh my, do you realize that we have moved into the '90s along with everyone else? We spend money on some very fine things. Remember, we have one of the first Neiman Marcus stores. We have art museums. Our zoo is better than yours!

Next Christmas we should have our own Nordstrom, so we won't invade North Dallas, but just remember who buys tickets to those big name concerts, hockey games, basketball games, etc., the next time you decide to express your opinion.

By the way, there was also an article in that same paper about some contractors trying to build some luxury condos on an old cemetery. What can I say? "Only in Dallas!!"

Daushyne Sawyer
Fort Worth