Letters To The Editor

Washington state

Sensible gun control begins at home

Why are we fighting over gun control? I don’t own a gun, but it’s my constitutional right to do so.

My son, Alex, had no idea what a gun was until he went to day care. When he realized that guns shoot things, he started shooting everything that ticked him off. I broke down and decided to teach him about guns. He doesn’t shoot anything that lives. If he does, he loses his gun for 24 hours. This has worked wonders.

My son still gets mad and shoots the trains that wake him up, but he knows not to point guns at people. Alex does not play cowboys or Indians. Not because it’s the politically correct thing to do, but because he can’t point guns at people. I firmly believe that if Alex did get hold of a real gun, he wouldn’t accidentally shoot anyone. He has been taught the do’s and do not’s of toddler gun control. Alex will be 3 in December.

Don’t you think that if a non-gun-owning parent can teach a child about guns, then a gun-owning parent could do the same? Well they can, and they do.

I was raised around guns. No trigger locks, no guns in a locked case. I knew my posterior would be heated if I even thought of touching Dad’s guns. When I was 12 years old, I went to a gun safety/hunting course. When I was in the military, I got a ribbon for marksmanship.

If I wanted to, I should be able to go down to the White Elephant and buy me a gun. No government should be able to take away that fundamental right. This leads me to a question: Why would anyone vote away any of their rights?

I guess that, in my naivete, I just don’t understand about guns. Jini M.Wolski Deer Park

West Siders may want I-676; I don’t

If you have the money, you can buy your dreams. Paul Allen bought a new stadium with our tax dollars. His dream came true. Now his buddy, Bill Gates, is trying to buy gun control.

You know, what’s really funny is that he is not focusing his vote-buying money at Eastern Washington. The Seattle metropolitan area is the voice for all of us with its voting power. So, a bunch of people who probably do not take any recreation in shooting are going to dictate to the rest of the state.

Initiative 676 is nothing more than gun registration. Then when the time comes, they can confiscate your guns. And then, who knows what’s next on the list. Some time soon, the people in Russia will have more freedom and rights than we now take for granted.

Having a weapon for your personal protection is the only defense against the violent criminals our judicial system refuses to deal with. So vote for freedom and liberty for all, and vote no on any type of gun control. Let’s lock up the violent criminals and throw away the key. Maybe we can then sleep at night with our windows open and enjoy the fresh air. Mike W. Seaton Elk

Don’t lose out on chance to vote

It has been said that many of us in Eastern Washington are somewhat lax in exercising our constitutional right to vote. If western Washington citizens vote heavier percentagewise, then we must catch up. Let’s make this year a noticeable turning point.

The last day to register or make an address or name change for the Nov. 4 election is Oct. 3. Go to the election and voter registration office in the Spokane County Courthouse, 1116 West Broadway; call 456-2320.

Registration forms are also available at any fire station, public school office or public library. These should be filled out and mailed to Olympia. Instructions and addresses are on the form, as is the deadline date.

Absentee ballots may be requested by calling 456-2320. Follow the instructions on this form, noting the deadline date. Hunters know that elk season opens immediately prior to election day, and that they will need absentee ballots.

Voters in other counties should check dates and regulations with their own courthouses. Please, don’t anyone delay.

Off-year elections make us lazy; there are no favorite sons to root for. But this year, we have many extremely serious proposals on which to concentrate. Any law that proves too expensive or absolutely unworkable may be with us for a couple of years before it can be legally rescinded. Lillian Ogletree Forster Spokane

Correction: Many readers have phoned or written with questions concerning the photograph of Waikiki Beach that appeared in the Travel section on September 14. Upon further investigation, it appears that the picture was inadvertently reversed.

GRASS FIELD BURNING

Few, if any, critters endangered

As someone who has lived on a grass seed farm in Spokane County, I want to reassure Kim Lane (Letters, Sept. 12) that in over 20 years of burning, I never once saw the carcass of a dead animal in our burned fields.

Deer and coyotes are often seen in the fields, but not usually during the day or during burning season, when harvested fields offer little cover. Porcupines, skunks, raccoons, rabbits and chipmunks prefer the woods and meadows at the edges of the farm, and are rarely seen in the fields themselves.

The only “furry little creatures” that actually live in the fields are mice and other small rodents, which probably are disturbed as much by plowing as by burning, although their continually burgeoning numbers suggest that neither practice is a major threat to their population.

Certainly, as someone who has helped to patrol fires, I know that it is no more pleasant to stand directly in smoke from a grass fire than it is to stand in smoke from any fire. And, if I were picking fruit next to a burning field, I might choose to leave while the field was lit.

I might also choose, however, to stay and watch, knowing that fire is a tool that - when used with care and reason - can help farmers properly manage the complex system of the farm; a system which includes not only the air, but soil, water, animals, crops and people. Katie C. Talbott Nine Mile Falls

If only auto emissions were visible

It’s a pity that the tons of automobile emissions daily drifting across the Spokane Valley aren’t visible. Then, for 365 days a year, people could see what is really happening.

You could have a Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority hotline for complaints, write articles about the daily tally of phone calls, and turn it into a real crusade - just like the one to get rid of the grass growers. But these pollutants are unseen, so there’s no problem.

But get rid of those grass farmers! Once their fields are filled with malls and mini-storage buildings, and covered with life-sustaining asphalt, we won’t have to worry about dirty air anymore. J. Mike Huff Colville, Wash.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Federal plans faulty and unnecessary

The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have spent $35 million and four years writing the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management project. The 144 million acres covered include much of Eastern Washington. Sadly, the public has been given only 120 days to read, comprehend and comment.

The DEIS proposes to change the way the federal government manages public lands but omits critical information. The DEIS calls for a concept called “ecosystem management,” but it doesn’t provide an adequate definition to guide a regulatory agency.

Do we really want the federal government to build an entire regulatory system around ecosystem management? Even the DEIS acknowledges that “the boundaries we put on ecosystems are artificial.” There are more than 100 maps in the DEIS, but none delineate ecosystems.

The DEIS states the goal is to change the land to what it would be if settlers hadn’t arrived. Road closures would hit recreational users the hardest because they account for 60 percent of road use in the Upper Columbia River Basin.

The Government Accounting Office and White House Interagency Ecosystem Management Task Force acknowledge that no legal authority exists for this change in land management policy. Furthermore, the Senate has twice refused to take action authorizing ecosystem management.

We family farmers have always considered ourselves the country’s true environmentalists. We put back what we take out of the ground. We want to pass our heritage to our children. However, we don’t support federal regulators micromanaging our land. Conventional land management techniques will solve virtually any problem.

Healthy public debate is imperative on a policy change of this proportion. Robert Brody, member Chelan-Douglas Farm Bureau Board, Wenatchee

People must take interest in plans

So, 50 kids have turned in 16,000 postcards to the planners for the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project. So, we have 50 kids and 16,000 others who are in favor of motherhood and apple pie. Probably not one of those 50 kids or the 16,000 others have read the draft environmental impact statement, nor do they have any idea what its implications are.

The kids wouldn’t even take a copy of the DEIS when offered, which makes it obvious they don’t have any interest in reading it.

To the credit of the project manager, she basically rejected such shallow input and suggested that what was needed is for people to understand “what is on the table.”

It’s frustrating to see the apparent total lack of interest in this DEIS by the public, our local public officials and even the media. As is all too typical, we will just cry a lot when it’s all over and we don’t like the decision.

The DEIS team’s preferred alternative is No. 4, which has the potential to be devastating to the rural communities of the West.

Congress has never accepted the concept of “ecosystem management” because an ecosystem cannot be clearly defined, resulting in questionable judgment by those in charge - our government.

Unless we want resource management to come to a screeching halt and serious negative impacts on natural resource-dependent communities, folks need to become interested in and submit comments on the DEIS. Mike A. Grattan Blanchard, Idaho

Real extreme is exploitation of the land

I’m not surprised by D.F. Oliveria’s editorial condemning the Inland Empire Public Lands Council’s call to end commercial logging on public lands. But I am discouraged that you continue to suppress the truth about logging on public lands and the inevitable fact that we must stop allowing big corporations and the government to trash our national forests at great expense to communities and the land.

Does Oliveria truly believe that multinational timber corporations care where they cut trees, or about the nearby communities?

Does he think Boise Cascade considered American workers when it closed its mill in Council, Idaho, and shipped the operation to Mexico?

Oliveria calls the IEPLC extreme. What I consider extreme is that the Forest Service, timber corporations and their political pawns continue to log the last 5 percent of our native trees at taxpayer expense, while leaving behind choked-off salmon and trout streams, polluted drinking water and fire-prone, fragmented forests. I’d like to remind The Spokesman-Review that in Washington state, only 3.4 percent of the timber production comes from public lands. And 95 percent of all growth in earned income in the interior Columbia River Basin comes from non-extractive sectors of the economy. So, let’s stop logging the last pristine ecosystems and begin to protect these national treasures for what they were initially set aside for: to sustain our spirits and nurture our minds with a piece of the wild and a sense of freedom. Lupito C. Flores Spokane

IN THE PAPER

Clark column careless, asinine

The Spokesman-Review’s editorial sense isn’t. Doug Clark’s Sept. 16 column (“Smooth Grand far too perilous for law abiders”) is irresponsible, not to mention poorly researched.

The column is irresponsible because he suggests, apparently with editorial approval, that motorists forgo using the newly reopened Grand Boulevard arterial and continue to use Garfield Avenue.

I don’t live on Garfield, but my child and many others cross Garfield to attend Hutton Elementary School. I hope Clark and the Review are willing to accept responsibility for the additional danger his careless, asinine suggestion poses for these children.

Secondly, Clark confirms a noticeable trend among Review reporters to write from their big behinds instead of getting off them to ascertain the facts. Clark castigates the Rockwood Neighborhood Council and its entire membership, which encompasses a large area from 29th Avenue to 11th Avenue and Southeast Boulevard to Grand Boulevard, for “whining” about the increased traffic on Garfield and erecting barriers to decrease neighborhood traffic flow when Grand was closed. However, the alleged whiners had no affiliation with the Rockwood Neighborhood Council.

Clark unfairly disparages a neighborhood that battles the same concerns facing most Spokane neighborhoods simply because he chose to exercise his half wit instead of his legs. Shame on Clark and shame on The SpokesmanReview for your irresponsibility. David A. Kulisch Spokane

Clark column Pulitzer material

I would like to nominate Doug Clark for the Pulitzer prize for his column of Sept. 16 regarding the Grand-Rockwood-Garfield fiasco.

I continue to wonder who has enough political clout to intimidate the city into blocking off and rearranging not only that route but putting up those strange triangular blocks on Hatch and Arthur, as well.

The residents’ annoyance at increased traffic and the alleged danger is understandable, but traffic has doubled or more on almost every street in Spokane in recent years. To use the specious argument about the presence of a nearby school begs the question: How about Adams, Jefferson and all the other schools in town?

Our street, 49th Avenue, has been converted into a race track for rolling boom boxes for weeks at a time because of work on Perry or 57th. Annoying, but for a few hapless domestic pets and some star-crossed squirrels, we survived - although some families chose to look for housing elsewhere.

As to Rockwood-Garfield being a private or neighborhood thoroughfare, wasn’t there a trolley line up Rockwood for quite a while? Doesn’t that make it an important transportation route? David G. Bunch Spokane

Encouraging to see youths’ stories

When I turned to the Sept. 8 B section, I was extremely pleased and impressed by what I saw. The entire front page was dedicated to an issue we rarely see in a positive light: youth.

True, all of the stories were written by juvenile offenders in a boot camp corrections program, but what insight and what talent. The pieces were well-written and full of hope. These are bright, talented, smart and worthy individuals who may have made wrong choices, but look at what a little guidance and positive attention can do.

I’m a 24-year-old mother of an infant, and I constantly worry about what kind of world my son will be living in when he is a young adult. I hope that with the continued efforts of myself, his father, the community at large and the media, it will be a world where we treat all children and young adults like they are valuable, intelligent human beings.

My heart goes out to all those who have been pushed aside by their parents, the system and all of us. It is a shame that they ended up incarcerated. But they are fortunate to have a second chance, and I wish them the best of luck in the future.

Bravo to the Spokane Juvenile Detention Center for its efforts, to the politicians who support these programs and a big thank you to The Spokesman-Review for such a positive and responsible article. E. Noelle Hunt Spokane