Councilman Matt Smith and Planner Jenny Haines would rather fix up a dilapidated house on Van Anden Street and fix a sidewalk on Perrine Street than restore the downtown to its previous efficient condition to draw in more business for this community.

There is only one true champion of the people on the city council and his name is David Dempsey.

After reading and looking at the photos in the Maroon Monthly, I couldn't help wondering why the children's names who are writing to our soldiers in Iraq are not identified, as are not the children in the photo directly above it, who were in the dodgeball tournament. Why are the names given in some photos and not in others?

According to our new secretary of defense, the war in Iraq is a situation where we are not winning it and we are not losing it, so we must be at a standstill. It's about time the Bush administration got their job in force.

Something terrible happened when I turned in a Two Cents about Shoeless Joe Jackson: It said that Joe Jackson was a pitcher. My being a national champion in baseball trivia dozens of times, I of course knew that Joe Jackson, along with Ted Williams, was the greatest left fielder that ever played baseball.

If Baker, Hamilton, Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden were in charge 60 years ago, we'd all be speaking Japanese and German right now.