READERS WRITE: Shedding light on art

Hartsfield installation (in)completely baffling

Regarding the neon artwork “Four Walls for Atlanta Hartsfield Airport” (“Art may come down,” Metro, Aug. 24): Over the years riding the escalators at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, not once did it cross my mind that the hodgepodge of neon placed haphazardly on the walls was a completed work of art. Intended to help me have a relaxing experience before boarding a plane, the only experience I had looking at this display was confusion and bewilderment as to when the contractors would get around to finishing the job, as obviously it was a work in progress. These thoughts were forgotten as I boarded the people mover but would be revisited on my return to Atlanta, and again dismissed just as quickly.

Truly art is in the eye of the beholder. For a truly awesome neon installation, experience Michael Hayden’s “The Sky’s the Limit” at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

KEN ABHALTER

Douglasville

Booze salves low self-esteem

College presidents who support the Amethyst Initiative (“Drinking age debate hits home,” @issue, Aug. 21) advocating lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 do so because “… young people drink to excess because it’s taboo” and they think lowering the drinking age will put a dent in college-age students’ binge drinking. Nonsense.

People abuse alcohol because they are uncomfortable in their own skins. No discomfort, then no real need to change who they are and how they’re feeling. Binge drinking is popular for no other reason than these folks need to get to some state of “feeling better” by numbing their current feeling. It has nothing to do with legality and everything to do with self-esteem and needing to be “somebody else” because “I’m really not all that comfortable with who I am.”

I applaud UGA President Michael Adams for [not signing] the initiative, but I’m curious how Adams, as chair of the NCAA executive committee, recently ignored and rejected the plea of more than 100 college presidents and athletic directors and the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, who requested a ban on beer advertising from college broadcasts. Some college students and college presidents seem to suffer from blurred vision.

PETER VAJDA

Sandy Springs

Gold mine for mechanics

I’ve come to the conclusion that car mechanics are underwriting the Atlanta sewer upgrade project. In a drive down Piedmont Avenue one recent afternoon, I counted 76 metal road plates in the stretch between Monroe and Cheshire Bridge. Other areas around town are torn up just as badly.

There’s no way to count the number of tires that have been blown and car alignments warped by these symbols of progress in Atlanta.

KEVIN MATHEWS

Atlanta

Toughing out high school football

I read Jim Osterman’s opinion column [about deaths during high school football practice] and it reiterated thoughts I have had many times (“High school football tough, then and now,” @issue, Aug. 23). I played junior high and high school football in the late ’50s and early ’60s in southeast Texas, where it was 90-plus degrees in September and early October and the humidity usually was close to the temperature. I don’t remember a water break until after practice, and then washing down the salt tablets they gave us. Oh yeah, my physical exam was a note from my parents saying it was OK for me to play.

MIKE McCRAY

Atlanta