March Letters -- Obachine Art Views Range From Much Ado . . . To Racial Image

A POSTER in a local restaurant depicting a Chinese man drinking tea held the attention of Times' readers in March.

The question of whether the artwork should be hanging in the ObaChine restaurant, owned by Barbara Lazaroff and Wolfgang Puck, drew 63 letters. Your Times' letters editor also dedicated a special Sunday page on the topic; guest commentary from as far away as Paris was published in our Op-Ed section. These were among the 1,196 letters received for the month.

Other local topics were education, i.e., charter schools, home schooling, the use of phonics vs. whole language and test scores, 52 letters; Initiative 200, affirmative action and racism in general, 39 letters; Metro transportation, traffic, growth, 40 letters; tribal hunting and fishing, 25 letters; and Mary K. Letourneau's imprisonment and announcement of her second pregnancy, presumably by her former student, 22 letters. The settlement of the Washington Education Association campaign-finance case also should be mentioned, with 21 letters.

Education is high on the mind of our March letter-award winner, Greg Orkiolla. The 43-year-old East Hill Elementary kindergarten teacher won with his clever satire on the phonics debate.

Orkiolla said he was upset by Sen. Harold Hochstatter's unyielding position that phonics is the only way. Phonics is a tool, Orkiolla said, but one of several tools. In his six years as a teacher, he has seen students of many ethnic backgrounds - Russian, Ukranian, Hispanic - for whom English is not their primary language.

"I want them to enjoy reading as much as I do," Orkiolla said.

President Clinton's travails and travels continue to dominate the national scene. We received 93 letters after the Kathleen Willey interview. We expect more to come, since the dismissal of the Paula Jones' lawsuit came late in the month.

The shootings at the Jonesboro, Ark., elementary school, and all matter of opinions on guns, upbringing and U.S. culture, drew 39 letters. Tax reform is high on the minds of readers, with our annual tax-reporting deadline approaching on Wednesday. That topic garnered 19 letters, mostly urging the scrapping of the Internal Revenue Service.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein captured the international spotlight in March, with 21 letters. The next-highest topics of interest were the Kosovo crisis, NATO expansion, Olympics coverage and the Preston Gates firm working for the Mariana Island territory, all with four letters.

- Betty Anderson, Letters Editor