"My family will enjoy barbecued shark for Christmas."

Homeless mote

Sitting at my breakfast table with a warm bowl of oatmeal, in my comfortable home, fortunate never to have had to live in an RV, I read with increasing fascination as “fairly well-paid nurse” Jane Underwood bitterly savaged Amber, an out-of-work mom reduced to living the “van life” on the streets of San Diego (“San Diego cracks down on anyone living in his car,” Cover Stories, December 16).

As I read Jane’s attack, I tried to imagine the deep unhappiness and hatred that would motivate an exhausting screed of hundreds of words and several pages devoted to a stranger’s life, but I couldn’t.

Though it was meant to incite me against Amber, the letter ended up telling me more about the person writing it. Such a small-minded, bitter person can’t be happy, and I hope, for the sake of herself and her patients, Nurse Underwood leaves off spotting the motes in others’ eyes and attends to the beams in her own.

“I feel uncomfortable parking anywhere around here. I feel like I have been singled out,” says Amber. “I don’t know where else to go. I just got to keep moving.”

Photograph by Matthew SuÁrez

In a world run by elites who disregard the wellbeing of most of us “little people”, it’s enough to make you despair that those who can’t afford homes are attacking each other. Save the vitriol for those who deserve it, Jane, and stop kicking people when they’re down. That’s the work of bullies, not nurses.

• John E Harrington
• Escondido

Endangered jaws

Posting that article about killing the 7 gill shark in OB is causing quite the uproar on social media and it’s not looking good for San Diego Reader (“7-gill shark caught off OB Pier – the world’s record?” Neighborhood News, December 22). It’s romanticizing the slaughter of an already threatened species of shark and will only encourage more people to start hunting sharks....which will destroy an already fragile ecosystem here in San Diego. Our shark numbers drastically dropped allowing invasive species to destroy our reefs. Please remove the article if you care at all about the shark population in California

• Neill
• San Diego