Truck It

I want to commend Dorian Hargrove for the excellent article he wrote on page 3, “Hidden Pipeline, Secret Menace” (“City Lights,” October 13).

Yes, that is an accident waiting to happen. Would you drive a car that is 57 years old? I don’t think so. I have called two of my politicians — the mayor and my city council representative — and I recommend that everyone who reads this paper call their representative. We need to shut down that pipeline and simply truck the fuel from Point Loma to Miramar. We have trucks that can transport fuel. This is not 1910.

Paul Lang
San Carlos

Anchor Babies

Re “Easy as 1,2,3” (Letters, October 13). Enrique Morones states that “undocumented people do not qualify for most social services” when they arrive in our country. This is false. When such people give birth to children, these children become automatic citizens who are eligible for welfare. So when one such baby is born, the family gets welfare. A second baby gets another check, a third the same, and so on. These “anchor” babies are also entitled to sponsor their illegal alien parents for legal resident status. These are realities, not myths.

John Primavera
via email

Too Much Commentary

Mr. Name Withheld spoke on voice mail (Letters) that the October 6 issue’s Thomas Larson cover story was loaded with who and whom errors. I wonder about someone who tells us he wants to make a comment, then makes the comment, uninvited, which tells us what he wanted to do, which was to make a comment. Well, if he makes a comment, he did not have to tell us that he wanted to make a comment — all he had to do was make the comment. He needs a speaker policeman (or -women)!

Saul Harmon Gritz
Hillcrest

The Dead Don’t Pay Rent

Thank you for a fair treatment of the issue of suicide (“SD on the QT,” September 15).  Everyone has a right to take this courageous option, permanently ending suffering, but it is selfish as it hurts friends and family members.  It is also selfish for friends and family to oppose the choice, however.  Society condemns suicide because the wealthy make their money selling rent and food, one less person reducing the demand for both.  Plus, the ruling class loses a “slave” that works hard at their job, making wealthy people richer, only to receive a tiny portion of that as wages.

Because suicide is an irreversible option, consider all options carefully.  To that aim, I point out some of those things which should be considered but are usually not at NZ9F.com/Suicide. Things like the help groups that help you do it.  And, the religious leaders who will give your life a fair evaluation.  In the end, most people who kill themselves do so because when they ask for help, they are instead arrested and subjected to torture in the mental-health system.  Yes, “torture” is the correct word to use.

The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was written about mental-hospital abuses but failed to inspire any changes.  One of the Greek Cynic philosophers, before taking his own life (they all did), wrote, “There is no God nor heaven, but there is a hell, and we are there.”  Not automatically true, but the point can be argued.  You own you, having a choice between what you are and can be, versus the choice of nothing at all.  Suicide needs no rush, as the option will still be available next month or year.

John Kitchin
via email

The Will

I would like to comment on your “Tattoo Boo!” story in the September 1 Reader (“City Lights”). I don’t have anything against Mrs. Fasulo and her tattoo school, but I would take exception to a remark she makes that you go to a swimming pool and everybody has a tattoo. She says, “You’re going to see every mom, dad, teacher, banker, doctor.” I would disagree with that. Nobody in my family, living or dead, that I know of has ever had a tattoo. None of my inlaws that I’ve ever met has ever had a tattoo. If any of my children or grandchildren ever got tattoos I would disown them; I would disinherit them from my will, believe me.

Most of the people I’ve ever seen with tattoos — I’ll leave out South Sea Islanders, Samoans, whatever; if they want to tattoo themselves, that’s their business, I don’t care — but the other people, the Americans I see — oh, yeah, I think the king of Norway or Denmark or someplace had himself covered with tattoos — but the Americans I see with tattoos I would classify as freaks or jailbirds or Mexican gangsters. And I can’t think of any exceptions.

When I was a kid about 14 years old, which would have been 65 years ago, I had a summer job as a locker boy at a swimming pool, and I didn’t see too many boys or men with tattoos, maybe one or two, and they fit into the category of jailbirds or freaks. I think maybe one was in the military.

Name Withheld
via voice mail