Boosting Child Safety

As a pediatrician and child safety advocate, I want to urge strong support for the new Massachusetts "booster seat law," which was discussed in the June 29 essay "Children, Seat Belts, and Safety" ("Perspective"). Motor vehicle crash is the number one cause of death in children aged 4 to 8 in the United States. More children die in cars than die of cancer. In 2003, a landmark study documented that booster seat use reduces the chance of injury to 4- to 8-year-olds in a crash by almost 60 percent, a huge improvement. Of course, we must effectively educate the public. As author Neil Swidey points out, high-risk populations will be harder to reach. For example, the promotion of booster seats for those children who currently do not even wear seatbelts will be a major challenge.

GREGORY PARKINSON
Falmouth

I have been very concerned with the fact that while there is a law for seat belts and child safety seats in private cars, where the number of children is limited and under parental supervision, there exists no child seat belt laws for school buses, where there are many kids without parental supervision. There must be a reason this is not being addressed, and I bet it has to do with money.

LINDA SCOLA
Medford

THE FIRST STEPS

Regarding "Running Strong" (June 29): Thank you for providing hope to amputees everywhere. At Dover Rehabilitation and Living Center, I work with recent amputees who are receiving months and months of physical therapy and rehabilitation, and the work of scientists to create orthotics for runners and others is the hope I can pass on to them to help them through this arduous time.

PATRICIA E. RIOUX
Seabrook, New Hampshire

SEEN ON THE WEB

From Jamais Cascio's blog "Open the Future":

[Prosthesis designer Hugh] Herr makes an astute observation about the cultural tension regarding prosthetics and the potential for super-enabled disabled: "[Herr] is bemused by the fact that when amputees run or climb more slowly than 'intact-leg competitors,' their athletic displays are considered courageous. But as soon as amputees prove they can actually compete with able-bodied athletes, accusations of cheating follow, he says." This seems likely to be a recurring theme as augmentation technologies and prosthetic enhancements move from the "good enough" to the "better-than-normal" level, and is a trend worth watching.

A BUILDING WEAKNESS

I read your article about Boston chief planner Kairos Shen ("The Shaper of Things to Come," June 29) with great interest, but I couldn't help feeling that it suffered from a lack of objectivity. A person in such a controversial position in a city with such strong passions about architecture cannot possibly be universally liked and respected, despite what your article seemed to suggest. Unfortunately, being familiar with the Boston Redevelopment Authority's review process, I know that for an architect to express a contrary opinion about someone who wields such enormous power over the fate of multimillion-dollar developments would be akin to professional suicide.

JASON D. COHEN
Watertown

HOME-RUN HOME

M-C Lamarre's notion of creating Fenway Park-inspired murals in homes ("Designing," June 29) has a precedent. In the 1950s, Red Sox catcher Sammy White converted the basement of his Newton home into a miniature Fenway: painted walls that depicted the park in 360 degrees, a floor that replicated the playing field, etc. As a young neighbor, I enjoyed the best seats in the house on several occasions.

N.B. COBB
Newton

TALES FAN CLUB

Each week I read the Globe Magazine from beginning to end. Often, I am irritated by the articles about wealthy homeowners' house renovations, sometimes by the "Coupling" columns, which seem silly and frivolous, and by the "First Person" interviews, which sometimes seem so shallow. But, without fail, the "Tales From the City" stories make my spirits soar, always with gratitude that the innate goodness of ordinary people is noticed, reported, and shared. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to send in their stories of kindness, helpfulness, and generosity. We so rarely hear these stories in daily newscasts and newspapers.

EMILY B. PRESTON
Jaffrey, New Hampshire

I just had to tell you how much I look forward to your (small but profound) "Tales From the City" column each week. In this impatient, discourteous, "me, me, me" society, it is so refreshing to see that there are still random acts of kindness in the world. They take only a few minutes, but make a difference in the lives of the giver and receiver. When I read the anecdotes, it's like watching a "feel-good" movie.

BEV POOLE
Dedham

FOR WHOM THE TOLLS TOLL

I read with interest Charles Pierce's take on state Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen's trial balloon regarding erecting tollbooths on Interstate 93 - what a bad idea it is and how it will mightily inconvenience drivers and cause traffic jams ("Pierced," June 29). Yes, I sympathize. You see, I know very well how inconvenient tollbooths are because I have the honor of living west of Boston (pretty well west, actually - in Amherst) and experience those dreaded tollbooths and the huge traffic jams that occur at rush hour and during other heavy traffic times (including just about any weekend in summer). It amuses me to hear folks who live north and south of Boston get up in arms about how ridiculous it is to even consider charging them tolls to drive to the city. Even folks from New Hampshire and Rhode Island get to trek to Beantown without those pesky tolls and the delays they cause.

Here's a thought: Let's make Worcester the new state capital. Boston will not lose any of its glamour; it has numerous institutions of higher learning, pricey restaurants, and Newbury Street. State offices can relocate to Worcester, which has plenty of space to put them. It would give the city a much-needed shot in the arm economically. Boston would gain some precious office space. And, yeah, I still think you guys should pay tolls, or at least support ending tolls out here in the hinterland.

ETTA WALSH
Amherst

Pierce should limit his humor to less important topics than state transportation policy. Fairly funding repairs and improvements to our infrastructure is too big an issue. Instead of being denigrated by a writer whose only vision of our transportation future seems to be through the windshield of his minivan, Transportation Secretary Cohen should be lauded for "taking a closer look at the possibility" of tolls on I-93.

Wait. Wait. Don't tell me. Does Pierce want a transportation secretary who does not look at all alternatives or who shies away from difficult choices?

JOHN DEMPSEY
Brookline

OFF TRACK

I have lived for years about 2 miles away from New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. Writer Charles Pierce ("NASCAR Nation," June 22) is right: "It touches everything about this place [Loudon], the track does." NASCAR is two weekends a year, but the races continue all summer, so I get to listen to the noise from the track every weekend as I tend my cattle farm. I'm sure someone is making money from the NASCAR weekends, but my beef sales go down on race weekends because my regular customers don't dare venture out on Route 106. Don't be tricked by this one-sided article that everyone in Loudon loves the races, because some of us have another story to tell.

CAROLE SOULE
Loudon, New Hampshire

SCREAM HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

I thought Robin Abrahams's response to the annoyed psychologist's administrator ("Miss Conduct," June 22) failed to take into account that it might really be true that the mother couldn't control her son. Not because he is her spoiled, indulged "precious snowflake," but because he might be experiencing behavioral issues so severe that the mother was not able to manage him - after all, they were in a psychologist's waiting room, right? If troubled children likely to act out are part of the practice constituency, the office needs a quiet conference room where that mom and her son could have waited without bothering anyone.

I generally find Abrahams's advice thoughtful, insightful, nuanced, and practical. But this one felt like she fell into the all-too-popular meme of All Those Awful Parents Who Can't Control Their Children Are Ruining Everything and Causing the Downfall of Western Civilization While They're at It.

MELISSA BARGER BAERN
Melrose

I think Abrahams was too quick to judge - and to judge quite harshly. Being the mom of a kid with special needs who at time acts up - and with whom I get stuck every now and then at the wrong place - I can sincerely tell you that there are times when there's nothing I can do to quiet my daughter down. A woman at a park once asked me to calm my daughter because her noises (she loves to imitate Tarzan) scared this woman's horses. I told her that I could ask my kid all I wanted, it would not help.

LUZ AREVALO
Boston

As the mom of a child who has been to therapists, I take a different view of the office administrator's predicament with a loud child. No child is in a psychologist's office for no reason. That mom probably brought that child and her other children for counseling or even evaluation for special needs. Remember, the mom's response was that there was "nothing I can do to keep him quiet."

BARBARA K. EMERSON
Dedham

BIG AND PROUD

As the mother to seven children aged 1 to 13 with more potentially coming, I'm printing Tom Keane's large-family essay ("Perspective," June 15) and posting it on my bulletin board. People who know us have stopped acting shocked to our faces, but I still get a whiff of attitude about how unfair our choice to have a large family is to our kids, people who are inconvenienced by us occasionally, and the planet in general. I've definitely noticed the phenomenon whereby large families tend to form a society unto themselves, and I'm looking forward to that closeness with my grown children, too.

ERIN NUGENT
Hudson

Keane's essay made me think just how lucky I was and still am. I come from a family of 14 children who grew up in Brighton. Although we didn't have much material-wise, I received all the necessary social skills. I would smirk when someone would seriously ask me if I knew everybody's name or how many bathrooms we had. As a child I was sometimes discouraged because I felt a few narrow-minded people were silently resentful that we were overpopulating their world, but I knew we had no control over that. It took some years later for me to notice how many of these people had turned and become envious of our family support system.

JOE LYDON
Uxbridge

What a lovely tribute. My husband and I (in our mid-30s) have four children - three biological and one special needs adopted. I, too, feel the pressures of trying to meet everyone's needs, but I hope our children feel the way Keane and his siblings do.

MEADOW RUE MERRILL
Bath, Maine

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