Brainscratcher

You have something screwed up in your Brainstorms puzzle for June 22. You give the answers for the puzzle for previous week, June 15, and one of the book’s titles is Via col Vento. (I’m pretty sure that’s Italian.) You give the solution for that as #17, Breakfast of Champions. That’s wrong. It should be Gone with the Wind. I think you have a mistake there because for June 15 you don’t give Gone with the Wind as any possible answer. Twice you show To Have and Have Not — as #8 and #12. One of those probably should have been Gone with the Wind.

Mistakes, illustrated

Via col Vento is not #17, Breakfast of Champions. I’m pretty sure it’s Gone with the Wind. I looked it up in an Italian dictionary. Via could be an adverb: off, away. And vento is a masculine noun, wind. I think col is probably a contraction. I’m not Italian but I’m pretty sure Via col Vento is Gone with the Wind.

• Bob
• via voicemail

You’re absolutely correct, Bob. We regret the errors. — Editor

I Have First Amendment Rights, Too

I guess that I am one of the “thugs” that Name Withheld is referring to in his letter where he describes himself as a “professional signature gatherer.” In simpler language, he is a mercenary. He is not fighting for any cause or anything he believes in, but he is doing it for the dollar per signature he gets from some rich businessmen who are out to subvert democracy for their own personal interests and profit.

I know what he means when he mentions the petition on the minimum wage. I got into several discussions outside of supermarkets with people telling them why they should not sign. Of course that wastes his time and lowers his income, just as he was trying to keep other people’s

income low. I too have my First Amendment rights and I used them to try to get people not to sign or even to discuss with mercenaries like him.

I am retired, in my late sixties, and of medium build. Oh, I must be such a thug! He was probably paid to write his letter.

I don’t get paid for my contribution and I know many people who register people to vote for no payment.

• Ed Erickson
• via email

Behind the Surfboards and Sunglasses

After two years and change in San Diego following a career as a journalist/college teacher and also a communication consultant to large organizations, I gotta say that there’s a lot to love in my adopted city, San Diego. There’s a lot else that turns the stomach of thinking people.

As I read San Diego history, I realize this is not new. San Diego is a money/power place that’s long disguised itself behind surf boards and sunglasses. But really, holding the homeless and our terrible streets hostage to a soccer stadium?

I hope Faulconer and his minions will get over themselves and do the right thing. But then I was hoping that for Donald Trump, our current JOTUS, too.

• Molly Larson Cook
• Old Town/Mission Hills