EDDIE DEAN’S UGLY diatribe “O Captain! Our Captain!” (8/18) certainly shows that he has an ax to grind with Jerry Garcia and the Deadheads. He calls those of us who went to the Lincoln Memorial to show respect the day Jerry died “truly pathetic, forlorn, totally bummed out.” Well, pal, how do you respond to the death of a loved one; are you gleeful and jumping for joy?

Dean is foolish and uninformed enough that he writes: “For crissakes, Moby Grape had three guitarists as good as Garcia.” With all due respect to Skip Spence, he’s no Jerry Garcia. If you don’t get what the Dead was all about, don’t try writing about it, you just make yourself look mean-spirited and petty.

Frankly, I expect much more from a so-called alternative newspaper than to piss on the grave of one of this nation’s most famous non-conformists.

Foxhall