Save the bays
What a great article! This issue can be solved by your common-sense suggestions and a lot of hard work and caring. Extremist views on either side of the issue don't solve anything and only serve to make the other side less willing to follow your sensible suggestions. How difficult is it to recycle? How difficult is it to plan your trips and drive a little less?
Many of these things can actually save you money and at the same time help save our environment.
—Mike Gramling
Temple Terrace
A poor man's extravagance
OK. I was so ready to feel the pain of all those mistreated, former residents of the End Gate Park until I re-read the part about poor Emory and his boat, his RV and his six — count 'em, six — pit bulls.
While I'm not suggesting that I tell Mr. Solomon how to live, nor how to spend his meager income, but come on, six dogs! Estimating on the low end, Mr. Solomon needs about 12 pounds of dog food a day at 55 cents per pound times 30 days, or about $200 for the dogs each month. Three hundred dollars for rent and poor Mr. Solomon has nothing left for the rest of his expenses, not counting the $35 in food stamps for his well being.
I can't imagine how he operates his boat. Shame on Mayor Pam. Shame, shame, shame. How does she expect people like Mr. Solomon to maintain their lifestyle if that's all our society and government allots? If Susan Edwards had done her math I'm sure she would not have allowed those hungry pit bulls present during the interview.
OK, liberals, start bashing my insensitive attitude.
—Bill Bergin
Palm Harbor
A reader's critique
I moved to the Bay area a few months ago and have picked up and read several of your issues. You offer so much info there's a kind of daunting encyclopedia aura to the Planet. But one thing I haven't found is info on antiwar activity in this area — rallies, meetings, teach-ins, roadside protests, anything. Back in the late '60s and early '70s when I was reading — and writing for — alternative papers on the West Coast, they were full of "movement" info, as well as articles about the war and the resistance to it.
Is this because nothing is going on? Or because your paper has adopted an attitude of cynical inertia?
I don't agree with letter-writer Kevin King that "there's no turning back" in Iraq. A bad policy is also bad to cling to. We should adopt the Aiken strategy (Sen. Aiken being one of the rare Republican critics of the Vietnam War): Declare victory and leave. If we don't leave, we're in for decades of killing and being killed — neither of those being a good thing — with all kinds of lousy consequences domestically and around the world.
Your Personals are OK, especially the "Wild Side," but I prefer the option of writing a letter. Your film critic has a fondness for big special-effect pix and was overly snarky about the Tambay Fest. Finally, I'm disappointed you would print an ad for Scientology on your back page. I guess you don't know anything about their long history of picking on the "mentally ill," not to mention writers critical of this "church." Paulette Cooper, for one. On their "enemies list."
—Robert Traven
Ozona
This article appears in May 6-12, 2004.