Readers Write (June 3): Minnesota in the Smithsonian, dance coach suspensions, surveillance debate and exercises, airplane boarding, wayward cat

It was great to see the article on Minnesota's Medical Alley and the recognition it is finally getting with the exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution titled "Places of Invention" (" 'Medical Alley' sets up in Smithsonian," May 30). I'm one of those Minnesota children who, as the article states, "was doomed to an early death if they didn't get the hole in the heart fixed." My atrial septal defect was repaired by Dr. Walt Lillehei on Oct. 24, 1963, and 52 years later I have no major cardiovascular issues.

I'm of the opinion that whatever was the fate that put Lillehei, Owen Wangensteen and Earl Bakken together at the University of Minnesota in the 1950s, it created one of our state's unsung economic engines over the next 60 years.

Surely the cardiovascular innovations and medical technology spawned from those three men have created employment opportunities in the Twin Cities that rival Minnesota icons like 3M, General Mills, Pillsbury, Dayton Hudson and the like. I'm proud of the Smithsonian Institution for recognizing this fact.

I'm also inspired by our own University of Minnesota's Lillehei Heart Institute, where innovations and research continue today that will provide great cardiovascular care to the next generations of Minnesotans, Americans and the world.

The Minnesota State High School League has a well-deserved reputation for being heavy-handed and knuckleheaded. The league lived up to it in banning four schools' dance team coaches for a year ("League suspends 4 dance coaches," June 2). The coaches and teams had stood quietly on the sidelines at an awards presentation to protest what they saw as a massive breach of ethics and sportsmanship. Several recent Minnesota and U.S. Supreme Court decisions have given First Amendment protection to a wide range of speech, including revenge porn and borderline social-media threats. Quietly protesting at a publicly funded event would seem well within those guidelines. The league might want to get ready for a little dancing of its own.

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Really? Dance team coaches, all female, suspended for one year by MSHSL executives — all males, based on the Star Tribune's report — for (gasp!) standing off to the side during an awards ceremony? These women had all been punished previously by their own school districts with less harsh measures. Maybe if they'd been male basketball coaches who swore at referees and players, as we've all witnessed, the league might have given them the usual slap on the wrist: suspension for games, not seasons. Naughty girls, how dare you.

It is sickening to keep hearing of these things.

As our representatives were wrestling with the Patriot Act, we discovered that the FBI is flying aircraft over our city and surrounding rural areas. Our government has become so invasive that the thought of "Big Brother" is slowly becoming a reality. We should ask our elected representatives why they have been silent on this activity. Is it not their responsibility to keep us abreast of any action that breaches our personal liberty? More and more, we find that those with power in government tend to minimize its overreach while we flail away in the wind looking for answers.

If Delta and other airlines want to speed up boarding (Business, June 2), they should pay more attention to the scientific literature. Beginning in 2008, Jason H. Steffen published analytical and experimental work in the Journal of Air Transport Management showing that a simple change in the boarding order can effect a fourfold reduction in boarding time. The key is to recognize, as the airlines appear to do, that stowing luggage is the main bottleneck. If even and odd rows board in separate waves, the luggage-stowers are all two rows apart and things go much faster, as Steffen demonstrated. If airline personnel are quicker than the usual back-to-front boarding order (found by Steffen to be the second-worst after front-to-back), it will only be because there are fewer of them to get in one another's way. But it is doubtful that they can beat the even-odd method of Steffen, in which all passengers do the work.

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If the airlines really wanted to know how to accomplish this, they would ask those who deal with the issue daily: the flight attendants. The last couple of years, I have done just that after seemingly interminable boarding processes. Or rather, I've asked why the planes I was on weren't boarded from the rear forward. I get the same response from all of the attendants — that it would be faster and that they believe it's the best way. They have told their supervisors, but it seems nobody seems to care what they think. I was even asked if I would consider writing or calling with the suggestion. One told me the concern of loading that way is that some people would use the overhead storage bins at the front of the plane no matter where they sit, but they added that they monitor the seating anyway and that it would be easy enough to monitor that as well.

At face value, the story about the wayward kitty reunited with his owners was touching and cute (" 'Wild' and cuddly cat can't help but stray," June 2), but in reality it was a sad reminder of irresponsible pet ownership. For the cat's owner to allow his cat to roam free in a major city simply because the cat liked it is absurd. A cat, like a child, is unaware of the dangers the outside world presents, including traffic, people, weather and other animals. Would the cat's original owner allow a child to wander about the city simply because the child may have wanted to?

Allowing animals to roam free may seem like you are doing them a favor, but it's only exposing them to risks. Keep your pets inside or in an enclosed yard, for their safety and your peace of mind.