Doves

I was very pleased to read your article about Prince. Congratulations on being invited into his world and into his process. What a great experience for Ann Powers. One small thing I would disagree with -- I would not consider "When Doves Cry" or the Black Album "early" Prince by any means. . Brian Savage Los Angeles Via e-mail

Re "We can't surrender to the doves," Current, Jan. 14 As Jonathan Chait knows, American doves indeed root for the U.S. to lose any military conflict. Michael Moore's tribute to Iraqi "Minutemen" is an obvious example. Even in Afghanistan, where terrorists masterminded plots to murder Americans, leftists could find no moral basis for defending ourselves. In their view, any harm that comes our way is retaliation for our incessant bullying. I welcome Chait's acknowledgment that armed force is occasionally a rational option.

The mourning dove, designated during the Vietnam era as the state's symbol of peace, can be hunted like any other wild game, the state Supreme Court ruled in Madison. The court said that doves fell within the unambiguous definition of "game" in the statutes. Wisconsin Citizens Concerned for Cranes and Doves sued to stop the hunt, arguing that lawmakers did not intend doves to be killed when they gave them the designation in 1971 and removed them from the list of game birds included in statutes.

IT IS 5:37 IN THE MORNING BESIDE the canal, dark but for slivers of light from a bulging pre-harvest moon high above the saline slick of the Salton Sea. Shooting begins in 10 minutes, not counting overanxious pop-offs. Honeybees from hives scattered across the farmland bump into the hunters. By 10 the Imperial Valley heat will be enervating, by 11 oppressive, and by noon an eviscerating 112 degrees. That's good, though, because doves fly farther south when it dips below 70.

Dove season began Sunday with a promise from the state Department of Fish and Game that the hunting would be "the best in years." Tell that to Luis Ovies. Ovies sat on a camp seat, with a lone mourning dove in his cooler, wondering where the birds were. He lives in North Hollywood and was among about 100 hunters who were in the brush before sunrise Sunday to try their luck at the Antelope Valley Sportsman's Club, west of Lancaster.

Jimi Goodwin, singer of the English band Doves, isn't sure he wants to be in a radio world where, as he has just learned, Justin Timberlake earned extra airplay from a New York radio station by revealing on the air personal details about intimacies with ex-girlfriend Britney Spears. Well, first, he's not sure he has much to offer in that regard. "I don't know who's going to be excited about what my girlfriend and I did two weeks ago," he says with a self-mocking laugh.

A pitch by Randy Johnson hit and killed a dove flying in front of home plate. The lethal pitch came during the seventh inning of the Arizona Diamondbacks' 10-5 victory against the San Francisco Giants on Saturday. The bird flew over catcher Rod Barajas' head and landed a few feet from the plate amid a sea of feathers. "I'm sitting there waiting for it, and I'm expecting to catch the thing, and all you see is an explosion," Barajas said. "It's crazy. There's still feathers down there."

When Janice Lee joined the Calabasas City Council (annual salary: $3,600), she kept her day job. Which explains why she's heading to the funeral of a 103-year-old woman in a pickup truck stuffed with live birds. It was barely 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning when Lee ducked into her backyard coop, setting off a flurry of flapping. She chose 21 snow-white rock doves, expertly plucking each one off its perch and plopping it into a cage. "They know there's a job coming up," Lee says.

Re "Helping Kids to Pick Up a Gun," Sept. 21: You are to be commended for exposing what millions of good hunters have always known. Unfortunately we live in an age when fewer and fewer people have a connection with wildlife, nature, hunting and fishing. These same people are manipulated by politicians, as well as anti-gun and anti-hunter groups, to attack the rights of law-abiding hunters and gun owners in the name of crime control. The facts are that gun ownership by responsible citizens actually decreases crime and hunters and fishermen(women)