Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Plaza great, except for one thing

I’m a frequent bus rider in Spokane and wanted to tell Spokane Transit Authority the new facility is beautiful. I read in the July 19 paper that the project concluded without a hitch.

I hate to nit-pick, but with all the effort and expense, couldn’t someone have told the painter how to spell Sprague? The huge letters on the Sprague side of the building spell “SPRAUGE.” Abigayle Murray Spokane

Please, no more progress

It used to take me 35 minutes to get from home to work, using Spokane Transit Authority buses, and reverse in the evening.

Now, thanks to modern technology and STA management, it takes me about an hour to make the same trip. Amazing what you get for only about $23 million. Bud Hull Spokane

Garco critic out of line

I was infuriated by the July 12 letter, “Clueless in Spokane.” Was someone starting a Garco-bashing campaign but forgot to tell the rest of us?

Garco Construction has been taking heat on the new arena since the day it broke ground. The media have yet to give the company any positive press. A local businessman, who employes local people so the money stays in our local economy. I like it.

If you need to get mad, let’s talk about Cox Cable TV hiring a firm out of Texas to lay cable all over the city. How about the Spokane Transit Authority building? How many millions past budget and how far past the deadline it is? It’s having a grand opening.

Tim Welsh has the right to celebrate. It’s not only his 50th but also a job well done. One brought in on time and on budget. I say touche, Tim. I believe it’s sour grapes. Thanks for showing the rest of them how it’s done. Linda Morton Spokane

Take weeds seriously

Spokane is known as the Lilac City, but it will take considerable effort to keep that name from becoming the Noxious Weed City. Our city and county leaders, as well as property owners, have been guilty of ignoring this problem.

Noxious weeds are deceptive as they have colorful flowers and, to the uninformed, could be mistaken for wildflowers. It’s against the law for people to allow noxious weeds to grow on personal property. In many counties, Weed Control Board people inspect your property and give you a warning with a time frame to deal with the problem. Or, they take care of the weeds and send you a bill.

Spokane County has a token assessment for weed control but the program is not working. If you’re interested in helping with this problem, you can contact the Weed Control Board at 456-5777 for a pamphlet to help identify noxious weeds.

Noxious weeds are very hardy. It takes a lot of effort and expense to keep them in check. I’m not sure if you can eradicate noxious weeds. My father used to tell me God must have known man wouldn’t take care of the land, so he created weeds to keep the land covered if the domestic crops and plants didn’t survive. Sounds logical to me. Gerald Ray Spokane

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Smith abandoned to her demons

How very sad, the evidence in the Susan Smith trial. If it truly does take a village to raise a child, where was her village?

Where was daddy when the childish demands of his sons were tolling upon the frayed nerves of the mentally distraught young mother?

Were the children’s grandmas available with loving words, willing laps when the bogies of despair and loneliness were sucking mud from their mom’s empty emotion tank?

Were there any aunts or cousins to say, “Honey, rejection sure hurts, but throughout the long corridor of time, pain lessens and we grow! Want to come over and talk about it?”

Where were the hugs of friends when the despondent young mother, desperate with misery and the anguish of rejection, felt only the selfish demands of a young man could meet the needs of her lonely heart and acceptance of love?

Or the neighbor to say, “Hi, Suz. Need some time to work it out? Bring the boys over to play with my kids. Bring their jammies and blankies, and you take some time to walk in the park, or read a good book, or listen to soft music in a soothing bubble bath! It will all look better tomorrow!”

Where was the village? C.M. Baldwin Veradale

Provincialism not new or right

Re: “Natives’ complaints are justified,” Letters, July 14:

I imagine the bottom line with you is if all outsiders would only go somewhere else, your fantasy land of pristine wonderfulness would be re-created in a whisk of stardust.

O’Brien is Irish, isn’t it? Were your ancestors immigrants to America? Perhaps as a result of last century’s potato famine in Ireland? If so, they could tell you volumes about discrimination, blame and bigotry. They got it in spades when they became the new neighbors in the tenements of New York. They were blamed for the same things you lay at the door of Californians.

Susan, here is a solution to your unhappiness with your new California neighbors. Shut down your local tourist bureaus, disband your economic development organizations, stop all publicity about the Northwest, refuse to allow non-natives to buy, keep or rent property or have business licenses, issue two-day travel visas to anyone crossing the state line and turn back all vehicles in which the driver has a California driver’s license. Ship out anyone who has a California birth certificate, regardless of length of residency.

Voila! Now there’s just you and all your wonderful, friendly neighbors in your all-American fortress still dealing with your own homegrown violence, drugs and gangs and your cherished minimum wages.

Why is it so hard to understand that history will endlessly repeat itself unless wisdom and a sense of interlocking humanity nullify the craziness? C. Barron Coeur d’Alene

Abortion technique speaks volumes

My octogenarian mother just heard via radio another hideous, unmerciful method of killing babies and she broke down in sobs. Would to God that we all would!

Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist grabs the baby’s leg with forceps. The baby’s leg is pulled out into the birth canal. The abortionist delivers the baby’s entire body, except for the head. The abortionist jams scissors into the baby’s skull. The scissors are then opened to enlarge the hole. The scissors are removed and a suction catheter is inserted. The child’s brains are sucked out. The baby is then “evacuated.”

This is America?!?

The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted. Psalm 12:8. Mae Shannon Spokane

Fighting back with humor, love

Gene Engene and Class Act showed true brilliance with their performance of “Stop! In the Name of Love” at the entrance of the Aryan Nations compound. It confronted the Nazis with two weapons that they don’t have - namely, humor and love. If they possessed either of these qualities, the Aryan Nations would cease to be.

As an artist, I aspire to have that kind of courage. Congratulations and thank you to everyone involved in the performance. Patrick Treadway Spokane

What’s real: Abstinence works

I must respond to Sandra Melcher’s July 13 letter (“For teens’ safety, first, be real”).

What is real to you? I venture to guess most of your clients aren’t married, are under 20 years old and aren’t planning any parenthood. If they plan to be parents, they don’t need you. It’s a well known fact most teens who get pregnant want a baby.

“Just say no” is simplistic, unrealistic and dangerous? You must be joking. As opposed to your alternatives? What is so unrealistic about being a virgin? I was and so were most of my friends. It’s hard but worth the wait. It certainly is simplistic and so is this: You can’t get pregnant and you can’t get any STDs without having sex. Most cases of AIDs are caused by sex.

Dangerous? What’s so dangerous about being a virgin? You set a goal early in life and you stick to it. Yes, it’s tough, but anything worthwhile is.

My reality worked. I’m happily married to a “virgin.” We have happy, healthy children and a marriage that began and thrives without fear of mistrust.

Reality based education is not protecting our kids because there is no moral teaching in it. Your reality is far more dangerous than mine, and condoms are not the only real protection against HIV. Abstinence is. Kelli Stellmon Newman Lake

THE MEDIA

Illustration of what’s wrong

Recently, about 12,000 boys and girls - over 600 teams from around the world - Brazil, Taiwan, Ireland, Russia, to name a few, gathered in Minneapolis for a week of soccer on more than 40 fields available at a large sports compound.

For two prior years, the Spokane team worked car washes and various product and service sales to raise money for this trip. This was the U.S. Amateur Cup of Soccer.

Some of these kids neither spoke nor understood English, but during that week their own communication system was gleefully established. What a magical influence on the future generations for the promotion of worldwide friendship, peace, understanding and goodwill.

The unforgettable spectacle represented fly-overs, a parachutist bearing the torch to light the larger enduring flame, a marching introduction of the younger international participants, pennants, color.

All this hospitable magnificence received minimal notice by The Spokesman-Review. Instead, its “lucky” subscribers were treated to a large photograph of a scrubby looking individual astride a motorcycle with “Jesus” scrawled across his exposed bare belly. ‘Nuff Said! H.B. Brown Spokane

TV new root of all evil?

Have we lost touch with reality? Has myth become reality and reality myth? Are we so busy running around inside the television picture tube we can’t see the real world outside?

Every evil or corrupt idea the human mind has conceived has been thrust at us through the medium of television. We lap it up like sheep led to the slaughter. Evil starts as an idea but ends up being something you can see and touch, like the gas chambers in Hitler’s Germany. It is prophesied the Antichrist will sneak up on us without warning and we will accept him, not recognizing him. Could the Antichrist be we, ourselves, our lusts, slander, pride and jealousy thrust back at us through television? Pablo DeRuiz Spokane