Without Malice

Where oh where to find Alice?
Who cheered folks without malice
If you need to prune
Poke the ad balloon
Not the man answering ALL us

Jill Porter
via email

Somewhat Fringe

Earth to Barbarella.… You’re breaking up (“The Secret,” “Diary of a Diva,” March 13). If you sincerely believe that positive thought being capable of changing the composition of water molecules is a mainstream idea, you need to hang with some genuinely mainstream people.

I found the attitude with which you regarded The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? astonishingly, almost appallingly, out of touch. Not because you fail to accept them as accurate but because you fail to grasp that the sort of people who would accept them as accurate are New Agey oddballs to the average American. Even the average San Diegan.

I realize that the Reader and its writers pride themselves on being at least somewhat fringe, but please consider taking a day and talk to, I don’t know, maybe someone who thinks Thomas Kinkade is a great artist. Who watches the Today show and Leno. Whose place of worship involves something as mundane as a cross or the Magen David. I believe you will find one more easy to find than you would a water-molecule manipulator.

In other words, it’s time for a reality check.

Maryann
via email

Right To Die

Congratulations to Stephen Dobyns for his excellent coverage of the November meeting of the Hemlock Society of San Diego (“So Long, Pals,” Cover Story, March 6). It was the first part of a two-part series on “What to Do with Your Body.” In the second session, we covered some of the more altruistic alternatives like the eye bank, organ and tissue donation, and the UCSD body-donation program.

We believe in choice and dignity at the end of life, which includes support for assisted dying. Dobyns’s observation that baby boomers need to start thinking about end-of-life issues is right on. For some reason, it is acceptable and easier to look at what will happen to your body than it is to examine alternatives to a prolonged, agonizing death, where quality of life and dignity are lost — a fate that thousands experience daily even with the excellent care hospice can provide. We do look at the available alternatives and support efforts toward legalization of assisted dying. Through our bimonthly meetings and newsletter, we inform San Diegans of local, national, and international events in the right-to-die movement and of resources where they can get information and support.

Faye Girsh
via email

Right On!!

The letter in your March 6 Reader from Laurel Gray of El Cajon was outstanding!

Everything stated was right on!!

I will never pay a cent for the propagandistic, prejudiced, lying Union-Tribune, and I fully believe it when the letter stated that in European polls, the U.S. and Israel were thought to be the greatest threats to world peace.

I often wondered why the U.S. is afraid of Israel. Israel has never admitted to any wrongdoing and refuses to divulge any of their country’s information. They have the atom bomb and believe in the death penalty. The U.S. and Israel are among the few countries in the world that still practice the death penalty. Israel doesn’t believe in an eye for an eye. It believes in an entire community for an eye!

Edna Foss
Ocean Beach