Seattle Press on Line - Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

Apr 25, 2002 -- Greenwood's Disappearing Sidewalk

To the Editor:

Sunday, April 7, the Department of Transportation sent a crew to blast the crosswalk markings from 85th Street at Palatine N, a well-used pedestrian crossing. This was its only response to the Greenwood community, which had been requesting the city improve the visibility of the crosswalk. Pete Lagerwey, Bicycle and Pedestrian Program, DOT, reports that high pedestrian accidents have led to the removal of any crosswalk markings. What is the department thinking? Without any notification of the community that uses the crosswalk, it just decided to take it out. If this is Mayor Nickels' idea of improving crosswalk safety, neighbors beware! Maybe tomorrow it will be your crosswalk that disappears overnight.

Katy Hill

Hegeman Wants Special Treatment

To the Editor:

Re: "Outdoor Sunday Market Coming Soon...or is it?", April 11 issue.

I felt a need to add to the fray after reading your article and several others in the last few weeks.

[When] requests for street closures [were made] by Jon Hegeman to accommodate his Sunday Market in Fremont, this year as well as last, most of us whose businesses stood to be affected were not informed or given information of meetings regarding these requests.

This prompted me to ask a small sampling of businesses (in the very core of Fremont) if they had received information regarding meetings to decide the fate of N 34th Street, between Evanston and Phinney. None of the 20 businesses in the sample were notified of meetings.

The Sunday Market in Fremont was started in 1990; Jon Hegeman's personal for-profit enterprise began renting plots to craft people and farmers marketers. In its 12-year history it has declined into just another flea market.

Jon Hegeman wangled a permit from the city to close the N 34th Street April 28 on a one-month trial basis. Of course, one would have to give credit to the wily Jon, he gets the city to close a busy street, and turn much-needed parking into rental plots for his flea market.

Sound Mind & Body opened their first gym in 1985, lost the location to the new Adobe Building, and moved to their current location. That is a 17-year history of bringing business to Fremont. Every person working out at the facility is a potential customer for all the wonderful shops we have. They did all this without closing streets and denying parking spaces to other Fremont businesses.

Mitzi Simons
Still here after 22 years

PS: We are not against having a Fremont Sunday Market, we wish only to be informed and participate in decision making concerning our community.

Needless Insult Mars Book Review

To the Editor:

I've been seething ever since I read Stephen Herold's book review of Malaria: Evolution of a Killer by Norma Mohr ("New Book Documents Old Disease", March 14 issue), and have only now had time to sit down and write to you about it. His blatant negative stereotyping of Jewish mothers and "Saigon street merchants" was shocking, and I was amazed it even got into print.

As Herold expresses how we overuse our antibiotics, he writes,"... We abuse our powerful drugs and re-introduce resistant strains of old killers, whether due to ignorant Saigon street merchants or hysterical Jewish mothers demanding antibiotics for their children's colds."

If he deleted the words, "ignorant," and "hysterical Jewish," his point would have just as easily been made. These words negatively stereotype mothers in general, certainly Jewish mothers and Jews in general, and people from Vietnam. His use of "Saigon" intrigues me since this is an older term that I have never heard any of my Vietnamese students and friends use now.

Any journalist of professional caliber knows not to include a person's race, age, religion or ethnic background in a news story unless it intrinsically linked to the subject of the article.

Herold's book review was presumably his assessment of Norma Mohr's book on how she thinks malaria is rapidly spreading. Certainly inserting sweeping negative generalizations about Vietnamese merchants and Jewish mothers had nothing to do with the subject matter at hand, and only served to expose the author's apparently unconscious prejudices.

Annette Peizer

Tubic Ignores Voodoo Element

To the Editor:

Your stocks article ("'Buy and Hold' Beats Market Timing", March 28 issue) doesn't pay enough attention to the investment factor which may be the most critical of all; I call it the Voodoo Element.

The Voodoo Element is in almost everything that happens in the goofy turmoil of stock "investing." One need only read the odd, evasive language of "analysts" and "consultants" to be aware of the airy, instantly retractable character of most "information" about processes which operate largely on myth and emotion and fear, alternating with periods of blind, witless optimism. The experience can be terrifying.

Buying and holding is, or has been, possibly the only sane policy in a generally insane environment--if what you hold is worth holding and you can afford to hang on.

The constant stress of the Voodoo Element is the effort one must make to put some polished, printed investment advice into use in one's real experience, where the real, vital knowledge is almost always not known 'til too late, as in Enron currently and who-knows-what next.

I spent literally all I had at the time to buy Microsoft in 1987, just before the crash. I had a frugal existence for some time (years) after that, but I decided I would keep the goddamn stuff 'til it either recovered or went totally down the dumper (which some other creepy purchases ultimately did) and all those years later I benefited greatly from the intervening misery by holding. (But now I can see I'd have done better to sell the stuff two years ago than still own it.) And now, having survived the pain of the past, I don't care. I'm still ahead. But that can change. And I'm watching the printed prattling from the Voodoo Element for "signs."

Gordon Anderson

Hightower Misstates Bush's Tax Bonus

To the Editor:

This is to reply to Jim Hightower's "George's Tax-Time Gotcha" (March 28 issue). Could it be that Hightower is ignorant or dishonest or just a case of both? My dictionary defines a rebate also as a discount. That could occur on future or past tax charges. The main thing was that those of us who got the $300 do not have to give it back. Further if you did not get it last year, you may claim it as a deduction this year.

Judging from the tone of Hightower's article I suspect he probably believes that recessions are caused by lowering taxes, that Al Gore invented the Internet, discovered Love Canal and that counting every vote means not counting the votes of those serving overseas in the military. Further, I would suspect that he does not have problems with renting the Lincoln bedroom, selling trade missions, trading missile technology to China for campaign contributions or suborning perjury or perjuring yourself as long as you are a Democrat. Probably it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is, and no I never had sex with that woman, I didn't inhale and there is no controlling authority. Might I recommend that folks like Hightower clean their own toilets before trying to soil someone else's? And lastly my parting remark is: JACKASS I HEAR YOU BRAY!

Conrad Schloredt

War is Not the Answer

To the Editor:

Reports indicate that the Bush administration is now preparing a military offensive against Iraq. War with Iraq will not make the world more secure from weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, war with Iraq could lead to the use of these weapons either on the battlefield or in heavily populated areas. Further, war with Iraq will likely swell the ranks of people whoa re sympathetic to Saddam Hussein and stimulate them to respond with violence at a time and location of their own choosing.

War is not the answer. Instead, the U.S. should take a different path--a way that strengthens the rule of international law, demonstrates respect for human rights, and breaks the cycle of violence. This path would begin with the following steps: 1) demilitarize the conflict by halting ongoing U.S.-led bombing and enforcement of "no fly" zones in Iraq; 2) resume negotiations with Iraq under the auspices of the UN Security Council; 3) end the inhumane economic sanctions that have kill over a million people and destroyed Iraqi civil society; 4) continue the current international embargo on military equipment; and 5) promote multilateral negotiations for regional arms control, peace and security.

Expanding the 11-year war in Iraq will only increase and prolong the violence and suffering and inspire others to respond in kind. The U.S. must pursue these other, more effective means to advance international peace and security within the rule of international law.

Keith A. Leitich

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