Cuddle Puddle
Alex Morris’s “The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant High School” [February 6] brought back memories of my teen years at the all-girl Walton High School in the Bronx, circa 1948. The “sophisticated groupies,” as we called ourselves, would gather on weekend evenings at someone’s home (no boys) and take off our tops, hug and kiss each other, and softly caress shoulders, arms, and necks (nothing below the waist, though). Today’s teens must be the offspring of my earlier encounters with my own “cuddle puddle.”
—Melitta Anderman, Fort Lee, N.J.
Alex Morris’s story on the cuddle puddle of Stuyvesant High School inspired me to wear rain boots to school the other day (I’m a senior there). I held my umbrella up high as I splashed through the cuddle puddle. Thankfully, I made it to the other end, sexuality intact and dry as a bone. It was a good day.
—Bruce Leonard, Manhattan
The cover story on the cuddle puddle of Stuyvesant High has reaffirmed my decision to move back to Nebraska after living in Manhattan for six years. It’s depressing to read about students with everything going for them engaging in orgy lite. How sad that they’re missing out on the sweet anticipation, longing, courtship, and romance of their first emotional and physical relationship with one special person.
—Jamie Nelson, Lincoln, Neb.
Your article ostensibly describing a teenage social phenomenon can be better read as a testament to Stuyvesant’s varied and open-minded student body. We would not consider the sexual behavior of a small subset of students “news.”
—Wyndam Makowsky, Stuyvesant Class of ’07, Manhattan
Okay, I get it. The Caucasian New York teen is a bizarre, hip, emotionally challenged being. I’m a schoolteacher at a pretty rough New York high school, and I have yet to see an article about life for the Hispanic or black student traveling two hours a day to get to school in midtown or lower Manhattan who tries to get an education in a hostile environment of metal detectors, security guards, a lack of books, and poor nutrition.
—Arlene Jograj, Manhattan
Revenge of the Weinsteins
Regarding Phoebe Eaton’s “Revenge of the Weinsteins” [February 6]: How could we not enjoy a profile that describes us as a “brainbox” and “a kind of handsome”? That said, we’d like to clarify a few things. Despite whatever differences we may once have had with Michael Eisner and the Walt Disney Company, we have continuing relationships with both current Disney management and Disney’s former CEO. Second, concerning the legendary investment banker Pete Peterson: His firm may not have completed the financing for our company, but he remains one of our most important advisers, a brilliant businessman whose Blackstone Group is one of the nation’s premier private-equity firms, and a great statesman who has served our country with distinction.
—Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Co-chairmen, the Weinstein Company
Donald Trump’s Suit
Donald Trump will open a can of worms if he decides to sue for libel [“Intelligencer: Trump Says Timesman Missed Billions,” by Geoffrey Gray, February 6]. During the court proceedings, he’ll have to open his assets to the public, demonstrating whether his fortune is tangible or a house of cards. It will either confirm that he has been a wheeler-dealer with a mixed record or the greatest entrepreneur in New York history, as he so often claims.
—Nelson Marans, Silver Spring, Md.
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