No Artificial Snobbery

The wonderful Tina Barney photograph depicts the living room, on Park Avenue, owned by her family, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Stralem (“Points of View,” Feature, April 6). The Picasso, “Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto,” was in their extraordinary collection of European and American paintings. As you may know, it was purchased at their estate sale by Lord A. L. Webber, who resold it in 2010. There is no artificial snobbery involved as your opening paragraph implies.

Russell E. Burke III
Greenwich, CT

The Abortion Debate, Part Zillion and Two

To comment on Alan Barysh’s letter in the April 6 issue (“The Abortion Debate: Part Zillion and One,” The Mail): The Nazis may have been anti-abortion but Hitler based a lot of his philosophy on eugenics from Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s founder. Think about that.

Bernard T. Walker
Baltimore

Women Of The World Unite (In Slitting The Throats Of Drunken Male Oppressors?)

I missed the showing of A Woman Like That (Film, April 20) at the Walters (have to pick up City Paper earlier from now on!), but I remember at the height of the second wave of the women’s movement, I had the treat of seeing a one-woman show about Artemisia Gentileschi. Actually it was an staged conversation between Hildegard of Bingen (powerful early Christian who wrote music) and Gentileschi.

Hildegard turns out to have been abused as a young girl, then she used that past to become the most powerful woman in the Catholic Church during her time. However, she was a wack job, intent on passing on the repression she experienced to the rest of us women. Artemisia, who was raped by some politically powerful guys, then underwent the further brutality of a court case which was primarily to restore the honor of her father. But she turned her anger into expressive messages, painting women who survive and win battles.

So, because I haven’t seen Weissbrod’s film, I can’t tell what her take on the “Judith Slaying Holofernes” painting was. But, that work is the centerpiece of the play I saw, and the point made is this: Judith wasn’t alone! She and her maid did the job on Holofernes. Of course, it would take one person to hold him down (even drunks wake up when their throat is being cut), so we girls better work together if we are going to go after the real enemy.

Cindy Farquhar
Timonium