Editor,

My brother arrives for his once a decade visit from the barren Atlantic coast of Maine to check on my slide into senility. After I tell him I am seeing a psychiatrist about my growing hateful rage, he asks me what she prescribes. “She attributes my condition to seeing my father hit my mother 69 years ago and to my being an atheist. She prescribes prayer and pharmaceutical pacifiers.”

My brother, trying to orient himself to the wonders of Whidbey Island, sees a Sept. 16 headline: “Garden grows on students.” His eyebrows injure themselves bumping the ceiling.

I explain, “It’s the South Whidbey garden mafia. First they disappear students, then they compost the remains.”

STEPHEN KAHN

Freeland