North Star Letter

Back to the point, I’d like to draw attention to the quote from Mrs. Rowling that appeared at the end of the article, something that really burns me because no one else seems to notice: “If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!”
Read that again. Are you getting this, gay community? Rowling was keeping this from you – keeping publicity and hero figures away from your apparently needy group. Why? Because she didn’t think that it would sell. That’s right – the author responsible for the hero you love almost neglected to let you know that you have a hero in your literary midst because she didn’t think it would sell.
Dwell on that.
Another issue in your issues with which I draw issue is that of the “Junk of the Month” column. As though the injury of being evicted from the upper parking lot (a fact of which we’re reminded every day by Jack Frost nipping at our nose and taking off a chunk as we trudge up the exposed hill into our delightful little school) were not enough for you people, now seniors have to live in a constant state of fear for being picked out and humiliated in front of the whole school because they didn’t feel that they should figure “status symbol” into their car-buying decision. Can I be frank, North Star (I guess it’s a little late for that)? I think it’s crap.
A couple more issues. Small ones. Promise. Stay with me here.
Does anyone want to tell me what the point of Kollege Kwest is? If not, I’m going to assume it’s filler, because it’s information we could obtain in two minutes from the college’s website, and receive by the mail in droves every single day. Instead of having these inhuman statistics, why not have students from North’s student body write about their experiences when they went to visit colleges? I think the experiences of someone with whom we’re familiar will be a lot more helpful than numbers on a page that no one bothers to read, anyway.
And why is there a Sudoku puzzle in the newspaper? Wait, I know this one! Space-filler. I mean, I suppose that’s understandable; you’ve got space on a page, and apparently can’t produce about nine square inches of responsible journalism, so you just take number-puzzles from a book (or the internet) and slap them on. More power to you.
Alright, North Star, old buddy, I admit, I have been pretty hard on you. Keep in mind, though, I only kid because I love. And I love because otherwise I’d look like a jerk, but that’s beyond the point, because I do have good things to say: your illustrations are incredible (especially, much to my surprise, the one in the Dumbledore article), and the photography is A-1 stuff. Serious kudos on that, North Star. Keep it up.
Maybe one day they’ll be good enough that people won’t be subjected to the horror of having their eyes wander to the parts of the newspaper that actually have complete sentences.

All my best,



Mike Sowell

**(Author's note: I've since made an apology for that last line, because it was terribly immature of me. I feel it would be irresponsible of me, however, to leave it out of this, so it's here for posterity.)