Netlets for Wednesday, Nov. 28

Coming home last Thursday evening after Thanksgiving dinner with our family, we drove up Nicollet Mall to check out the holiday displays. We started on Washington Avenue and drove until we passed Macy's, then exited the Mall. Umm, where were the displays?

The only store we noticed was Macy's, which inherited the wonderful display windows put in by Dayton's when the store was built. This year's display was quite sleek and sophisticated, but still did not elicit a warm, homey, Christmas feel.

Driving past Gaviidae Common, there were no windows at street level. Second level featured large fashion photos in the windows, but nothing in the holiday spirit. The third floor featured what appeared to be a large display of cardboard boxes shoved against the windows.

As we passed City Center, I didn't see any signs of the holidays. (In retrospect, the closest I can come to describing it is a boarded-up rollerskating rink slathered with posters not related to the season.)

Nicollet Mall used to be a magical place to enjoy from the outside as well as inside the shops. I have warm memories of the old Donaldson's store with its Mall windows displaying the annual show of animated fairy tale dolls dancing and cavorting.

Back then, each storefront had its own way of eliciting holiday cheer, and it was a delight to stroll the Mall and be enticed in by the magical projections from the storefronts.

There's been recent talk about reopening Nicollet Mall to private vehicles after all these years. My suggestion: Don't bother until you have firm commitments from the retailers make the Mall more presentable to customers who would be driving the street.

College in the Schools classes: a better measure than AP I greatly appreciate whenever the Star Tribune includes an article about education so I thank you for your Nov. 21 article "Are AP classes advanced enough?" As a recently retired teacher, I am very aware of the College Board's requirement to certify courses labeled "AP" and the "hoops" required to meet their standards.

What was missing from your article, though, was that Advanced Placement classes are really about students passing the AP exams. A teacher's well written syllabus and course certification do not earn students credits unless they pass one exam given on a specific day in the spring of the year.

The University of Minnesota's nationally accredited College in the Schools (CIS) concurrent enrollment classes provide a much better assessment of the rigor of classes and students' subsequent success than do the AP classes. CIS teachers are selected, trained and consistently monitored by the University of Minnesota which eliminates the question of whether the classes are "advanced." In addition, students are assessed based on their cumulative work in the course just as they are in classes taken on campus. Successful completion of a CIS class results in University of Minnesota credits which can be transferred to most other colleges. College in the Schools is an incredible program which benefits instructors, students and parents. University of Minnesota College in the Schools offers classes in a wide variety of disciplines. Unfortunately, the CIS program is not as well known as the AP program, but a continuation of Star Tribune stories about advanced course opportunities for high school students could rectify that.

MARY LENHARDT, MINNEAPOLIS

Thanks but no thanks Thank you, money, for taking away my love for professional sports. Thank you, papers, who when there are no games being played, write only about contracts and the hard decisions that players have to make, the sacrifices for more money. Thank you, Tori Hunter and Johan Santana, for your stay here and please enjoy the fruits of your labor and your money, too. As for me and my house, we will not serve the almighty sports star anymore with overpriced ticket prices and souvenirs and cable access. Thank you, money, for all of these things.

Second Amendment is a relic ripe for repeal The Nov. 21 column "Another Second Amendment shootout" by Robert A. Levy originally ran in the Los Angeles Times with the title "Unholster the 2nd Amendment." I have a better idea: Repeal that constitutional remnant of the time of muskets and coonskin caps.

Other than the First Amendment mention of "the press," the Second Amendment is the only one that mentions a specific technology. Without a Second Amendment, we would not have courts -- those unelected unaccountable activists -- wrangling over whether ownership of weaponry depends upon membership in a militia, well regulated or not, or what is or is not a militia, and whether a fundamental Constitution dictates whether or what we can possess in the age of silencers, Saturday night specials, sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, mortars, private aircraft, howitzers, bazookas, semi-automatic assault rifles, tasers and a standing army equipped with many more lethal weapons.

As weapons technology and our varied domestic conditions change over time, our elected representatives are fully capable of adjusting laws to govern the boundaries between domestic tranquility, self-defense and sporting life.

STEVE MARQUARDT, LAKE LILLIAN, MINN.

Civil unions for everyone? Mary Catherine Preus believes she has reached a compromise regarding same-sex civil marriage: Let gays and lesbians settle for the term "civil union" (Opinion Exchange, Nov. 18). However, experience tells us that separate is rarely equal. Furthermore, equal protection under the law, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, cannot be compromised.

My heterosexual partner and I are holding off getting married until government ends its discrimination. Let religious people keep the term "marriage" for their private religious ceremonies if they wish. We don't care what the state calls our civil ceremony, just as long as it is equally available by the same name to our gay and lesbian friends.