Letters

Train Pain

Even the title of this article hit home for me (“Where Can I Get Some Peace and Quiet?” Cover Story, January 15). My wife and I live downtown in a building where the average price is over $1 million and the last unit sold for $2.8 million (dollars, that is, not pesos). Every night around 3:00 a.m., a freight train runs past our chic building, where the obviously deaf conductor attempts to emulate an eight-minute-long 9.0 Richter scale earthquake with the sound of his horn while passing by our building at the infinitesimally exciting speed of .02 miles per hour. Am I the only one who hears it? Thanks for noticing!

Dr. Mitchell Holland
via email

Huh?

In the January 15 Reader, page 104, “What the Chef Eats,” third column, lines five and six. It says, about sea urchins, “They use them for things other than uni now.” What is uni?

Bob
University City

Naomi Wise responds: Uni is the Japanese name for sea urchin roe (or gonads; it’s all the same when it comes to this delicious but utterly primitive life-form). In this specific context, the speaker is saying that sea urchins can be used for a great many dishes besides the classic sushi of a pillowy mound of the urchin atop a square of seasoned rice.

Correction

In the January 8 “Reader Puzzle,” the clue for 63 Down, “Book after Deut.,” was incorrect. It should have said “Book before Deut.”

Pencil Pushers

Your article on colored pencils (“Best Buys,” January 8) was interesting, but are you aware there is a chapter of the Colored Pencil Society of America here in San Diego chock-full of sophisticated, award-winning artists who are experts on colored pencils? They could tell you more accurate and more interesting information than in your article, though that article was meant to sell pencils.

Its webpage is currently under reconstruction, but you can take a look at cpsa.org to see the national organization.

The local chapter’s next juried exhibition, “The Red Space,” will be March 18 to 30 in Gallery 21 in Balboa Park’s Spanish Village.

Karen Rhiner
via email

Meaningless Voice

After having avoided the Reader for six months, I picked up the January 15 issue. Outside of Don Bauder and “City Lights,” I conclude that the Reader is incapable of being a meaningful voice for any reform of this benighted county. Indeed, the Reader is a symptom of the intellectually dead kultur of the dummkopf, which is the San Diego person. The reviews by Duncan Shepherd were predictable and pompasinine. Why another question on New Year’s resolutions, as if anyone cares? But the most amusing thing in this issue was your ad for a neighborhood news stringer. “We’ll pay you $50 for your news story.” Is anyone outside of your headquarters that hard up?

Name Withheld

One-Star Slumdog

Always enjoy reading your paper, especially when your movie reviewer gives Slumdog Millionaire one star and it’s named movie of the year. That’s sarcasm.

George Minard
Solana Beach