Coming Out Stories
I occasionally check out The Julliard Journal online and wanted to compliment you on the October “Coming Out” feature (“Coming Out: Stories of Family, Liberation, and Love”). I thought they were moving and compelling, and I would imagine they perform a valuable public service to the Julliard community and to anyone else like myself who might chance upon them.

Frank Shanbacker
New York, N.Y.
The writer is a producer for NBC News.

The Space-Time Continuum
I wanted to express my appreciation for Mitchell Crawford’s comprehensive inquiry into the Virginia Tech tragedy (September Voice Box: “Terror’s Many Faces”). While I found the article a provocative read all the way through, one line in particular struck me with greatest interest:  “Many Americans seem … no longer willing to invest emotional energy in what is, admittedly, a confounding and extensive problem.”  In the very next line of his concluding paragraph, he directs the reader’s attention to the topic of American indifference with an attempt to correlate such with a sense of “we’re the best” mentality. 

With regard to his Third Law of Motion (for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction), I think Newton would take note of Mr. Crawford’s natural writing style, as I would further suggest that it’s not so much an unwillingness of Americans “to invest emotional energy” but rather a consequence of being unable—likely due to Washington politics—to openly deliberate the necessities of restraints upon modern time-shifting devices such as iPods, iPhones, TiVos, and DVRs, which distort our sense of reality along the space-time continuum.

Michael Norton
Woodside, N.Y.

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