225BatonRouge.com

Kudos for Coach Les Miles

Dear Editor,

Great story (“Miles from football,” August). My stepfather is ex-LSU Board of Supervisors member Charlie Weems, and I have had the fortunate experience to meet both Les and his family. While you are correct that his ability to settle in probably came from winning the National Championship, it is awesome that now the “LSU Community” gets

to see Les Miles “the man.”

My hope is he does get to see all his kids graduate from U-High. That means he will be in Baton Rouge for another decade plus, and that would be a good thing for LSU, Baton Rouge, and anyone who gets the chance to meet and interact with the Miles family.

Thanks for taking a look at the person and not just “the coach.”

Charlie Cash, Dallas, Texas

‘Asian’ is preferred term

Dear Editor,

I got a chuckle out of the letter to the editor from Julie Li (“225’s insensitive language,” August), and especially your reply. Some time back an expatriate of Baton Rouge, now residing in San Francisco, was visiting and he was taken aback upon reading the restaurant guide in our local paper where the heading “Oriental” was used to classify a group of local restaurants. He said that the word “Oriental” is considered a slur by all of the Asians that he knew in San Francisco, regardless of their country of origin. And he was amazed that his hometown still used that term. I e-mailed the newspaper and, in the next edition of their restaurant guide, they had modified their classification and used the term “Asian.”

I’m not a fan of political correctness, and I don’t consider this issue as such. We might do better to get with the times on this and many other issues so that we aren’t rightly accused of being a backwater, and also not depend on Associated Press definitions to instruct us in accurate and up-to-date usages.

Chuck Booksh, Owner, Nature’s Treasures gifts

Can’t get enough Best of 225 Awards

Dear Editor,

After hitting more than 10 businesses with only empty 225 racks, I found one copy at a CC’s hidden under some other magazine on the bottom rack almost on the floor.

My note is to ask: are there any more to be found?

My friends and I love to eat out in Baton Rouge. The girls from my office here at CF Industries eat out once a month, and we agree with the “Best” choices named in the Best of 225 Awards. We’re excited to learn about some new places listed in the magazine that we haven’t tried yet.

A little advice: print many more copies for the Best of 225 Awards next year.

Janice Falcon, Donaldsonville

Editor’s note: We print 2,000 extra copies of our July Best of 225 issue, which are then distributed to about 250 racks around the parish. The good news is that if you miss an issue you can always find the majority of content on our Web site at 225batonrouge.com, and that includes the Best of 225 Award winners for each year since the awards’ debut in 2006.

WEB WORDS

What readers are talking about at 225batonrouge.com

We are B.R.

I think we get way too caught up in worrying who is leaving Baton Rouge. I left Baton Rouge in 1987 after finishing LSU with an engineering degree. There were few job prospects here in those days. I (and my new bride) left for a job in South Florida, where we lived for 10 years very happily. After having children, we decided to move back here to be with the rest of our family (which includes many talented people who never left).

Baton Rouge is Baton Rouge—which happens to be pretty great in the grand scheme of things, I think. We are not and never will be New York, Palm Beach, Las Vegas, Austin, Atlanta, or even New Orleans.

Why should we want to be? We are Baton Rouge.

—Posted by liberatedtiger after Rebecca Breeden’s Out Loud blog, “B.R. sees another exodus of its creative class”

Are Cameras the answer?

Regardless of the motivation, revenue or people safety, too many people are being injured or killed in motor vehicle crashes. Example: Tuesday, July 29, three people die in an I-12 crash because of a “tailgater.” That crash affected not only those killed or injured, but the families and friends. We forget about those people, but they bear the suffering.

We can choose to criticize or praise efforts to stop motor vehicle crashes, but will that solve the problem?

—Posted by simoner after Chuck Hustmyre’s Z-File blog about traffic light cameras