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Letters to the Editor
Thomas Whittemore cartoon |
To the Editor:
Your Stephen Herold tribute to poet Bob Sund ("Fine Roman Hand," October 11) caused me to get out some books of his poems which Bob gave me years ago, including Bunch Grass and the Ish River poems. In the acknowledgement part of one of them he had included my name with those of many people, few of whom I've heard of or from recently; another shock of realization that Time Marches On. Sund is dead? Ridiculous. GOOFY.
Sund and I met fifty years ago as students in the UW Creative Writing classes. I knew then that Those were the days; Thinking, Arguing, Partying in the Blue-Blue Moon; Bob brought a full size piano accordion to the Blue Moon one night and lost the instrument on the (tipsy) two block walk home. It later was found in an alley where he had put it down while he rested.
THOSE were the days; you can hand the 21st Century in your EAR. I've just bought a 1920 Dodge Roadster to recover a little of the fun of the 1923 Nash Roadster I owned in high school/college 1947/1952. THEN was BETTER. Right, Bob?
Gordon Anderson
'53, '58, UW School of Art
Sound Transit Ignores Reality
To the Editor:
Great article on Sound Transit ("Sound Transit's Betrayals," October 11 issue)!!
Last night I attended Sound Transit's "North Link Light Rail Scoping Open House" and I was appalled by the way that Sound Transit continues to ignore the desires of our community.
The "scoping" process is used to present to the public the probable design of a system, with some potential alternatives, to gain comments and input from the community. The range of alternatives presented by Sound Transit was disingenuous and dishonest. Every alternative shown was simply a slightly different route of their completely unrealistic concept of tunneling all the way from downtown to NE 70th Street.
Has no one at Sound Transit ever noticed that the voters of Seattle twice approved the study and development of an elevated transit system? If a majority of the public is interested in studying the feasibility of elevated transit, wouldn't it make sense to present an alternative which addresses this desire?
Besides betraying a clear mandate to look at elevated transit, Sound Transit demonstrates that it is wastefully working with a total disregard to the financial realities of mass transit projects.
As was demonstrated with the design of the southbound route, Sound Transit will never be able to afford an underground transit system heading north, so the only realistic alternatives would be a surface or an elevated system.
Given that an underground system will be prohibitively expensive, and that a surface system cannot solve the surface congestion problem, it is staggering that Sound Transit hasn't bothered to explore the "alternative" of the only solution which is left, elevated transit.
Andrew Reay-Ellers
Get Your Pitchforks Here!
Dear Editor:
Thanks so much for Tara Peatie's trenchant "Sound Transit Betrayals" (October 11). The soi disant Sound Transit elites are trying to put another one over on us taxpaying peasants. I will join the poor people's march and bring lots of rope as well as pitchforks and torches. Tell Tara she can borrow my well-honed pitchfork.
Don Vandervelde
Sound Transit Boondoggle Means Other Needs Not Met
To the Editor:
(Welcome back!)
It is time to reconsider the entire issue of Sound Transit's plans, particularly the very expensive Light Rail Link proposed to run from just north of the Airport, ending just south of Downtown. There are infinitely boring details of cost overruns, failure to maintain a schedule and lack of credibility that dog Sound Transit's Board and Management; these are readily available and justify canning the whole thing. More important are two basic facts: 1. We have a great bus system on which to build, and 2. Our region changes faster than an agency such as Sound Transit can possibly plan for. Who imagined that in the period between our yes vote and today we would have experienced the dot-com boom and bust, Boeing HQ leaving, or our rapid population growth (and subsequent sprawl)? Sound Transit's plans build for the past and do not promise future improvement of our traffic mess. There are more logical and cost-effective ways to improve our traffic mess--Monorail, for example. Surface rail is intrusive and dangerous, Monorail adds another dimension .
We North Seattleites get the worst of the deal: our tax dollars flee-south by the millions and our services receive little or no enhancements. Perhaps a silver lining ; we also don't get the disruption of our lives and commerce for the years of construction building this white elephant!
Neighbors, this is not about a little $2.1 billion boondoggle, it is about the streets and bridges that won't be repaired, the busses that won't come, and the taxes we will pay to eventually get service north of downtown. Think about your wallets and checkbooks, and let your elected leaders know how you feel!
Tobey Wilkins
Carrying the Torch
Dear Publishers,
We have read the last two issues of The Seattle Press and are very happy with you new owners. I would like you to stay in business and grow. Your offer of a few months' free copies is overly generous for a small newspaper.
Enclosed is my check in the amount of $20 for a one-year subscription to The Seattle Press. I am a second generation native Seattleite and have always lived in the North end, and graduated from Lincoln ('42). Your paper keeps me up to date on the real goings on in the city.
Maxine Woodall
Editor's note: the new owners of the Press extended free subscriptions through 2001 to previous subscribers. Subscribe to the Press by sending your check for $20/year to: Seattle Press Subscriptions, 4128 Fremont Ave. N, Seattle, WA 98103.
Kids These Days Have it Easy
To the Editor:
Just picked up your October 11 issue while visiting the UW HUB and thought I would write an answer to your "Sleepless in Seattle Schools" about going to class at 7:45 a.m. Back in 1930s and 1940s we did just that in Wink, Texas, an oil boom town during the Great Depression Dust Bowl days, and we had so many students, we had classes on the football field every day, weather permitting, and we were not allowed to leave school grounds until after 4:30 p.m. And the teachers were glad to have a job those days.
When my mother passed away with pneumonia in 1939, we still had those hours for school, and the bus drivers left at 4 a.m. to make it to all the ranches and be back by 7 a.m. We even had sports activities after school as well. After my mother passed away and my father abandoned me, I dropped out of school and left town for Lubbock, Texas to work for a living before I was a teenager. After I went into the service at 18 and spent two years in Tokyo, Japan as a medic, I returned to Wink to finish three years of high school. I well remember being in the high school band in 1949 when all marching members of the band had to get up and be on the football field to drill at 4 a.m. until 6 a.m. This is where I went to school with the late Roy Orbison who was also in the band. No one complained as far as I remember, but we all got to know each other better than in any other school in Texas. Today, Wink is just about a ghost town, but during World War II the sun never set on someone who had gone to school in Wink, Texas. Now it is slowly becoming a tourist town.
Been there, done that...
Leon Thompson
Wink High School, 1952
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