Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘Sudoku Puzzle’
First, I want to thank The New York Sun for adding the Sudoku puzzle to your daily addition. Second, I want to let you know that the front of this card is itself a Sudoku solution.
It’s perhaps very clear with the red hearts because their shape is stand-out, but it’s also true with each other color square, if you care to check. Also, if you’d like to use these as a graphic in your newspaper on Valentine’s Day – or the Day After Valentine’s Day – please feel free to do so.
I think it might be useful also to inform readers who love Sudoku that it’s not about numbers at all but just about the logic of a pattern and creating (analyzing and formulating) that pattern, and that colors and/or shapes make as much sense to use as digits, which, after all, on one level are only shapes made of lines and curves. This information may add something to their appreciation of the puzzle they do. Best regards and Happy Valentine’s, too.
HENRY E. NASS
Manhattan
‘Parents’ Gasps Greet Remarks’
It is a sad commentary that parents have to attend an orchestrated “town” meeting to better understand teen behavior [“Gasps From Parents Greet Remarks As Pupils Talk About SATs, Sex,” Deborah Kolben, Page 1, February 13, 2006].
Adolescents have always pushed the envelope and engaged in effervescent behaviors. With self-esteem in place and active parental involvement, the need to shock, send loud signals to be heard, and engage in life threatening, risk-taking behaviors diminish.
You portray a world of privilege where parenting has often been delegated to hired help. Additionally, parents are preoccupied with career pressures and strained marriages, and they themselves rely on smoking (a gate-way to drug use) and drinking alcohol to excess.
Wealth cannot substitute for intergenerational time together free of performance pressure in which parents are role models with whom teens can identify. Such involvement extends well into the college and young adult years of development. Children who experience this structure are buffered from a culture saturated with sex, materialism, and negative peer pressure.
SUE MATORIN
Manhattan
Ms. Matorin is a family therapist on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry, Weill College of Medicine at Cornell.
Please address letters intended for publication to the Editor of The New York Sun. Letters may be sent by e-mail to editor@nysun.com, facsimile to 212-608-7348, or post to 105 Chambers Street, New York City 10007. Please include a return address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.
