Is Denver's new zoning proposal a cure for the common code?

Now they are closing my high school, and I understand why: Our founder, Rex Brown, never envisioned P.S. 1 as a place to house students who had no other place to go or educational/behavioral problems that other schools could not handle. This is what P.S. 1 became. P.S. 1 was created to prove that if you give students the resources, they will want to learn and teach themselves. As Brown taught me, this Jeffersonian style of learning needs to not only be embraced by the faculty, but the students as well for it to work.

Hopefully, at some point the loss of P.S. 1 can be replaced by something else that encourages self-learning and explorations, internships, community outreach, portfolios and student-led presentations. P.S. 1 was a utopia in a myopic school system that overlooked different ways to teach students.

Peter Ragonetti

Brooklyn, New York

"Pot Luck," William Breathes, January 21

I read with great interest William Breathes's article about 8 Rivers. My wife is JAHmaican and we noted the irony of using the name of the Jahmaican town Ocho Rios in English; cool.

Vizcaya is not a Cuban rum; it's been a Dominican rum since 1960, when it transferred its distillery from Cuba. Sadly, cannabis may be legal to obtain in cuisine and prescription in Colorado, but Cuban rum, cigars, sugar, et al., are illegal in the U.S.; they would shut them down in a Havana minuto.

My wife and I have been making all sorts of cannabis-laced food since the early 1970s. If you haven't seen it already, I recommend the 1968 film I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, with Peter Sellers, as well as the famous Barney Miller episode "Hashish," in which the entire detective squad eats hash-laced brownies without knowing what they are and get high. Hilarious.

Jonathan Jackson

Pasadena, California

Nice article on 8 Rivers. Thanks for getting this info out for those of us who want to learn more about cooking with herb. The place sounds great, and I'll see some of you at the next class.

Paul Wall

Frisco

"Community," Juliet Wittman, January 14

The Juliet Wittman review of the Kitchen was so boring, yet typical of the vast majority of restaurant reviews written for the last thousand years or so. To paraphrase: I had a bunch of boring crowd-pleasers: mussels, gnocchi and seared scallops. They came in sauces. They were nice.

Especially when you put her summary back-to-back with an extended quote from Sheehan's piece on the same restaurant, the contrast becomes sadly obvious, or obviously sad. Lacking is the passion, style and extreme subjectivity that made his reviews worth reading, whether you agreed with them or not.

Barbara Middlebrook

Denver

I have been reading Juliet Wittman's theater pieces for as long, if not longer than I have been reading Cafe. So I was not surprised at all to discover that she could write about a restaurant and about food with panache and verve. If Ms. Wittman is Jason Sheehan's replacement for good, then I say "Bravo!"

Jason Sheehan: Eat your hat up there in Seattle!

Bill Gardner

Denver

"Drunk of the Week," Drew Bixby, January 14

Pints is a great British pub — but alas, it does not have the largest collection of pourable single malt whiskeys. That honor goes to the Dundee Dell in Omaha, with over 800 pourable single malts. Still, having visited Pints, I think it is a grand place.

B.J. Reed

Omaha, Nebraska