Belongs In The Senior Lounge

Re Moss Gropen’s article on wandering oils (“The Case of the Wandering Oils,” “City Lights,” May 5). Where the painting of senior citizens belongs is in the senior lounge in the park.

Saul Harmon Gritz
via email

What Is This About?

Re “Barrio Fabulous?” by Walter Mencken, published May 5 (“SD on the QT”). Is there more to the story? Or what is this about? I don’t get it. Is he an official designer of the cartel?

Ana Gomez
via email

“SD on the QT” is the Reader’s “almost factual news feature. — Editor

The Restaurant Is Closed

Ed Bedford’s article about Côté Sud Bistro was interesting (“Tin Fork,” May 5).  You might want to inform your readers that the restaurant closed about two weeks ago.

David Cohen
via email

Put Them In A Pen

That “Roam-O-Rama” by Jerry Schad on page 59 (May 5) about Chiquito Basin. That was not a very intelligent idea to give us this as a hike. The papers have recently, within six months, reported on a mountain lion that was born up in Orange County, traveled all the way down to Oceanside, then wound up in East County, and he killed all the sheep over there. What would have happened if he met one of us? Jerry Schad is telling us to take this hike where they’re born and they breed in Orange County. It says here Chiquito Basin. I mean, you’ve got to be a pretty foolish person to go up there even with your friends. They’re born and breed up there, and they shouldn’t be in Orange County or San Diego County, in my opinion. They should all be rounded up and maybe put in pens. You’ve got to be an idiot to take this hike.

Paul Lang
San Carlos

Palin Instead Of A Monkey?

Loved your article “The Fall of Western Civilization” (Cover Story, April 28) but don’t understand why you used Sarah Palin on the cover instead of a monkey or wild animal to represent stupidity.

Charles
via email

One Of The Biggest Lies

Enjoyed the article “The Fall of Western Civilization” (Cover Story, April 28). Many of these groups are around town but much less formally. I take offense to the highlighted quote on page 28, one of the biggest lies/deceits of the 20th Century: “You can have tyranny on the left or the right. You can have Stalin or Hitler.” Both Stalin and Hitler are on the left. Both are/were socialists competing in the same arena, one called Nazi, the other communist. Both led to death/prisons on a massive scale. Look it up yourself.

Name Withheld By Request
via email

Nervous About Smart Meters

I hope you write more articles about the smart meters (“Smart Meter? Her Heart’s Not in It,” “City Lights,” April 28). I’m really nervous about this because my apartment sits above 21 meters, and it’s very distressing to me. I do know from Toys R Us that baby monitors have very low power, and they can go only 400 feet — that’s their range. Smart meters must go many, many miles. They must have extraordinary power and use a lot of energy. I’m just worried about that. I hope you do more articles on it.

Name Withheld
via voice mail

1300 Trees

We want to thank you for your article about our demonstration against the project to build a plaza and commercial space here in Tijuana, B.C., where the Benito Juárez Park lies (“Yonder Lies It,” April 28). This park has a large green space that holds about 1300 trees that the project threatens to cut down to build the plaza instead.  We are pleased to invite you and the readers of this letter to our next demonstration that will be held on Wednesday, May 18, starting at 9:00 a.m., at the doorsteps of our city hall.

Arnoldo Torres Sanchez
via email

Thanks To Joe

Writer has a real major question. Does the Reader pay this “T.G.I.F.” columnist Brizz fellow for “blah” about his daily experiences? What the deuce does he get? The difficulty is, most of us here maybe could not give a hoot what and how he spends his daily life. And he gets a paycheck? How lucky can you get? Too, most writers don’t all too often fob off wearisome, odd, retouched photos of themselves on us, the Reader’s readers. With thanks to Joe Browan for literary inspiration (Letters, April 28).

R.C.

My Life, Your Life

Hell, I assure you my life is far less interesting than yours (“Who Cares? We Don’t,” Letters, April 28, re “Diary of a Diva”). I live vicariously through your trips to the grocery store, wine tastings, and early bedtimes!

Emily Walker
via Facebook

The Ordinary’s Extraordinary

I, too, found it interesting that he read you enough to know topics, etc. (“Who Cares? We Don’t,” Letters, April 28, re “Diary of a Diva”). That is the beauty of your writing. You can make a trip to a museum an adventure or break our hearts as you go through the process of selling your home. If he does not get that, it is completely his loss.

Kim Fritz
via Facebook

Think About The Pith

I read your column every week (“Who Cares? We Don’t,” Letters, April 28, re “Diary of a Diva”). It’s witty and pithy and full of a life experience that is completely unlike mine. Not better or worse, just totally different and interesting. You always leave me with something to think about.

Laurie Miles
via Facebook

Dadadada In 1970

This is a request for you to follow up on Jay Allen Sanford’s article in “Blurt” on April 21 (“Stadium Doo Dads”). Anybody who’s older than 45 and ever went to a minor league or major league game in the early to mid-1970s knows that the Charger musician is full of it. Because sitting in a Tucson Toros Minor League Baseball game in the early to mid-’70s, well before his 1978 claim of writing it for the Chargers, all of us remember the stadium organist going dadadaaadada. We all yelled “Charge.” So that wasn’t something that was created for the Chargers in 1978. It had been used probably throughout the country by organists in all kinds of various stadiums in minor and major league play well before 1978, because I never went to any sporting events after the early to mid-’70s. So, someone needs to look into this guy’s charges, because it doesn’t all revolve around the Chargers, and it’s not correct.

Name Withheld
via voice mail

The Powerful Matthew Alice

For me, the most interesting part of the Reader, by far, is “Straight From the Hip” by “Matthew Alice.” I really enjoy it, but its publication is sporadic — frequently it’s there, but sometimes it’s not. Okay, so you’ve got a writer who will not (or cannot) produce a column on a reliable basis (and I don’t mean just going on a vacation for a week or two each year!). He’s really a pretty good writer, so readers miss him when his column doesn’t appear — but if he’s not willing (or able) to do a column each week, why don’t you hire a substitute writer who can write a few similar question-and-answer columns and submit them to the Reader so the paper can have them on hand for publication whenever the regular columnist cannot (or does not) produce? Does “Matthew Alice,” as entertaining a writer as he is, wield so much power that the Reader is afraid to provide readers with a substitute in weeks when he does not come up with a column? I think this is something that the Reader needs to consider.

Paul Andrews
San Diego

Not Obsessed With Booze

In your article of April 7 “Foot Traffic, Retail, Up in Smoke” (“City Lights”), Andy Hanshaw, the paid director of Discover Pacific Beach (the business improvement district for Pacific Beach) made an inaccurate statement that we would like to address.

Mr. Hanshaw is quoted as saying, “The people on the town council have spent a long time on alcohol, and it is a large part of their agenda.” This is factually incorrect.

The Pacific Beach Town Council is a broad-based community organization with over 500 members. We are dedicated to the general betterment of the community and fostering a cooperative effort between business people and residents.

The vast majority of our general membership meetings are dedicated to direct communication with elected officials and representatives of the city.

One example of what we do is our having a recent discussion with the police regarding the issue of homeless people around the library leading to the active involvement of the police homeless outreach team in our neighborhood.

In March, we conducted our fourth-annual graffiti paint out, involving close to 100 people.

In January, the Pacific Beach Town Council sponsored its fourth-annual community forum, where issues such as alcohol-related problems, loss of retail business mix, bike-ability, dogs, and homeless were among the top-25 major issues on the minds of attending residents, including many Pacific Beach Town Council members.

Overall, the Pacific Beach Town Council does not have an official position on the alcohol issue, as we are a neutral forum for discussion and to express our members’ concerns to city officials. Our members may collectively have an opinion one way or the other on alcohol issues, and our board strives to represent them equitably.

We invite everyone to join the PB Town Council to express your concerns and to have your voice represented by our 60-year-old community organization — representing business owners and residents’ voices since 1951.

Joe Wilding
President
Pacific Beach Town Council

The False Becomes True

At first it appeared that Mike Myers (Letters, April 14) was giving a thoughtful, balanced presentation of his worldview.

But the veneer of reason was stripped off, exposing his true agenda, when he attempted to bolster his ideas by using the old trick of segregating, stereotyping, and denigrating those who hold viewpoints different from his.

An ideological movement can be beneficial to a society up to the point that the misstatement of fact becomes justified.

As a result, it is inevitable that traditional values must change so that the favored doctrine may be promoted by gradually adjusting the truth until the contrived myth becomes the accepted narrative.

That should be simple enough for anyone who has read 1984 to see.

Here are some unadjusted historical facts: the First Continental Congress of 1774 began with a public prayer “in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our Savior.”

Thereafter, each session of the Continental Congress opened with a prayer, including the second, which gave us the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

In that document, our Founding Fathers relied on “the protection of Divine Providence” to proclaim that “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” entitle a people to institute governments in order to secure the unalienable rights “endowed by their Creator.”

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 also started each day’s work with a prayer when they instituted a government based on that Declaration by writing our Constitution.

In addition, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court have always begun each workday with a public prayer since their constitutional beginnings in 1789.

This is not an “establishment of religion” that is prohibited by the First Amendment; it is the “free exercise thereof” that cannot be prohibited.

Perhaps the views of our Founding Fathers were influenced by the truth of Jesus’ words to the Governor of Judea (Pontius Pilate), “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above.”

Jim Crooks
Oceanside