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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Letters To The Editor

IN THE SCHOOLS

Respect rights of parents

The letters to the editor concerning children’s literature have all boiled down to one thing. Who decides what is best for each child. Will it be the teacher, the child or the parent?

While we wait to make that decision, we are losing more and more children to the ever-increasing violence in society. More and more parents are choosing private schools and homeschooling for their children. If the basis of “choice” in the public schools are teachers’ individual tastes and agendas or the whims of children, maybe we can understand why.

In the end, I will be the one who will have to answer for the job I have done raising my children. I will be the one they come to when they have nightmares or when they need a home to go to in the future. Teacher, please respect that. Mary A. Irby Medical Lake

Children robbed of the classics

One of the premises of the book, “The Giver,” is that children should have access to the “knowledge of the centuries.” I agree. Unfortunately, Lois Lowry does not, in her best effort, rate in that category. I am sure that “Goosebumps” does not even rate consideration.

I feel sorry for the young people who have written in support of these books. While their teachers titillate them with pulp, they are being robbed of time-tested classics which could give them real knowledge and power.

Our children will not have the benefit of being able to analyze characters based on knowledge of the Greek classics. They will not have the advantage of a wonderful vocabulary to describe beauty like the Romantic writers. But have no fear. They will be able to recognize a good sitcom thriller when they see it. Davis Turner Medical Lake

Not an issue for the classroom

Once again our local, liberal press has scoured its sources to find an article promoting homosexual behavior (April 4). A math teacher from Merrimack, N.H., James Roy, is fighting a “courageous” battle against the duly elected, conservative school board who dares to “stand firm” on a policy that doesn’t allow teachers to “pass out materials, instruct, or offer counseling portraying homosexuality as an acceptable way of life.” Roy says of the students, “I would be teaching them nothing if I quit this battle.”

Is Roy really suggesting that one can’t teach even math without making the point that homosexual behavior is a legitimate expression of human sexuality? An element of the homosexual agenda is, indeed, to read homosexual innuendo into everything. Literature and art are given a homosexual twist, even where no inference to homosexuality exists. Authors and artists are identified as homosexuals, regardless of a lack of evidence.

Roy insists that he can’t discuss AIDS under this crippling policy. How can one discuss AIDS and not present homosexuality in a negative light? AIDS is the quintessential reality of the promiscuous nature of homosexual addiction.

The real battle here is between a community that doesn’t want homosexuality tied up in a pretty pink ribbon and sold to their children, and a teacher’s union determined to do just that. If the teachers and administrators weren’t promoting homosexuality there wouldn’t be “hundreds of students wearing black, armbands and pink triangle pins in protest” and there wouldn’t need to be a policy to circumvent their predatory efforts. Susan VanEngelen Spokane

SPOKANE MATTERS

WWP needs to clean up spill

All of us who live and work in Spokane County are hoping that the Washington Water Power Co. president and board of directors will thoroughly and completely clean up the oil spill near First and Post. Downtown is the core of our region and the center of our community, and the Davenport Hotel is the core of downtown. Now is the time for WWP to emerge as a hero and the savior of Spokane.

WWP, we need your corporate citizenship and your leadership. We know the costs of properly cleaning up the oil spill are significant, and we appreciate it. WWP, we all need you. Bill Osebold Spokane

Don’t exaggerate about potholes

For those Spokane residents who read The Spokesman-Review’s “Public Periscope” April 1, we ask that you not take the attempt at humor seriously.

While Jim Camden states he would “never suggest callers intentionally exaggerate” the size of potholes when calling Spokane County’s Pothole Hotline, he playfully adds the county will fill the biggest potholes first.

There is a reason we ask citizens to give us the size of potholes when calling us,.

Spokane County crews rely on these calls to patch and fill potholes that are dangerous to drivers. If someone were to exaggerate the size of their “pet pothole” and another, larger pothole goes unpatched and causes an accident, Spokane County and the taxpayers may be liable for that damage.

Our intention with the Pothole Hotline is to have the driving pubic help us identify potholes on county roads. We trust the public will use this offer in good faith, so that we may take proper care of the roads and respond to poor road conditions in a timely manner.

We would also ask the community differentiate between city and county streets. If you don’t know, go ahead and call the Spokane County Pothole Hotline. We’ll pass the information on to the city of Spokane for their crews. If you live in the city call 625-7733. If the pothole you are calling about is located on a Spokane County road, call 458-2547.

Spokane County Public Works staff appreciate the callers who have already used the Pothole Line. Chad M. Hutson Spokane County Public Works public information specialist

Many older drivers are incompetent

I have lived in Spokane for 20 years. Nowhere else has there been so many elderly drivers.

I have almost been in six accidents over the past three months because of elderly drivers.

They have no ability to judge distance, drive faster than 20 mph or even see over the dashboard. I have spoken with several people and nine out of 10 who have been in a traffic accident had their accident caused by an elderly person.

I am sorry, but I am tired of seeing them drive down the middle of the road, swerving into my lane without looking and then, thinking that because they are older, they have the right of way.

Stricter driving enforcement laws for the elderly are needed. The elderly should have to have a driving test once a year and written and eye tests every six months. Steve Stoddard Spokane

Comments on meeting ring false

I’d like to address some misinformation contained in Steve Thosath’s March 24 letter (“Officials must hear, heed public”). He is upset about some county staffers’ overheard remarks regarding the Critical Areas Ordinance.

What he doesn’t realize is that Commissioners Steve Hasson and Phil Harris had every opportunity to attend the county planners’ meeting on the COA, but didn’t. If Hasson and Harris really wanted to “make decisions based on all areas of input,” as Thosath contends (and I agree), they should have attended.

Thosath also complains that the Feb. 27 meeting ran so late because the departments of ecology and fish and wildlife testified again, and should not have because the meeting was for public input.

1.There was a total of three staffers from both departments at the meeting. 2. Those staffers are members of the public and had the right to be there just as everyone else did. 3. They had to wait to testify, as well. 4. They have never received any special treatment. Compare what they recommended and the now-effective ordinance.

Harris’ poor facilitation was one of the main reasons the meeting ran so late. He did not call speakers in a chronological order and only randomly enforced the five-minute speaking limit - a limit he himself decreed. Sheesh, Harris, five minutes by definition is five minutes! Get a timer. I’d be happy to instruct you on its use. Joy Culp Spokane

Charges hard to believe

I have been a patient at Northwest Nephrology for 14 years, long before it became Northwest Nephrology. For the last three years, I have been on dialysis and have received medical insurance from both Medicare and a private insurer. I receive periodic statements from both insurers, which I check very carefully. In all those years I have, to my knowledge, never been billed for services that I did not receive or been billed more than once for the same services.

When my kidneys first failed, I was unsure of how I was going to pay all of my medical bills. My physician, Mark Frazier, agreed to accept whatever my insurance would pay and went so far as to say that he would continue to treat me even if he received no payment from any source for his services. A physician who is more interested in his patients’ health than being paid does not seem to me to be the kind of physician who would be involved in overbilling the federal government for patient services. John D. Gimbel Mead

ANIMALS

Cat could teach us a few things

I have been so moved in recent days by the news reports of the valiant mama cat who risked her life trying to save her five kittens from a burning building in New York (News, April 2). Then, with her eyes blistered shut and her paws burned, she made a head count of her babies by touching each one with her nose to make sure they were all safe.

I couldn’t help being struck by the irony of the article right next to the mother cat rescue story - “Child abuse, neglect up 27 percent since 1990.” What a sad contrast of values, that those little kittens are more loved and valued and better cared for than some little people.

We should all learn a lesson from the brave mama cat. Dodie Gerding Spokane

Be a friend to the animals

“Government honors man for wetlands restoration” (Spokesman-Review, March 31) was a nice, sentimental little piece. Gunnar Holmquist and his mother are true nature lovers in a what’s-in-it-for-me? world.

Spring is here; summer soon will be here. What say we follow Gunnar’s example and put out, on a daily basis, a pan of water for all the birdies and other creatures? In my back yard a menagerie of small animals and birds congregate around the water hole for a daily sip, a bath, whatever. I even get a yearly visit from a rockchuck.

Please put out water every day. It’s not hard to do and will make the living things much, much happier. Josephine J. Lannen Spokane

NATURAL RESOURCES

Privatization can help forests

New Zealand just announced that it will sell 464,360 acres of its national forests to private owners. That country dabbled in socialism for a while, but gave it up about three years ago, and things have gone swimmingly since. The economy is booming and there are other benefits.

The forests will benefit from privatization. Among the greatest environmental stories in this century is the regrowth of forests in the eastern United States. Maine, once the most heavily logged state in the nation, is now the most forested, due almost entirely to private ownership.

Most private forests are healthier and more productive in several ways than the government’s silvicultural slums. A recent article in the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s Bugle described the need for logging, including clearcutting where appropriate, thinning, and the controlled use of fire to produce healthy forests for wildlife as well as wood fiber - management techniques the foundation-funded environmental groups have blocked on public land, and continue to block.

We ought to sell the our forests to somebody who can take care of it. We ought to be as smart as the Kiwis. Edwin G. Davis Spokane

A dream or a nightmare?

Eric Torbenson’s article, “Dream team mines golden opportunity,” praises the Spokane-based Yamana Resources’ current activities in Indonesia and elsewhere. I cannot concur.

A February National Geographic article on Irian Jaya, Indonesia, makes one wonder whether Yamana Resources and partner, Barrick Gold, will landscape the “6.7 million acres of rights …” as has Freeport-McMoRan with its open-pit mining practices in the Sudirman Mountains. Let’s hope they won’t.

Are the short- or mid-term gains worth the cultural and ecological damage (possibly devastation) that takes place? According to the February article, claims have been made that companies have driven people off traditional land, tailings have caused flooding, as well as the bulk of the jobs go to outsiders. Fatal clashes have also taken place between local people and company employees. Resource depletion on such a scale should not be applauded but should be curtailed.

Realizing that profits along with desires for certain lifestyles can blind us, the ability to immediately stop devastating practices in Indonesia and elsewhere is impossible. Hence, as a matter of corporate conscience and policy, Yamana Resources and its partners are encouraged to contribute a reasonable percentage of profits to a community-based foundation. Such a contribution could assist those whose land is damaged or destroyed, in repairing local ecosystems, as well as in supporting development of sustainable businesses. It’s the least that can be done. We should be stewards of the land and culture rather than rapists, even if the land and people are halfway around the globe. It matters. Margaret W. Hall Priest River, Idaho

OTHER ISSUES

Convention a risky endeavor

In “Public Periscope” (April 1) the story on Don Fotheringham is badly distorted.

The pros and cons of a constitutional amendment to impose term limits were not the subject of Fotheringham’s crusade of 1995.

He was a one-man army against the calling of a constitutional convention. The people who want this convention, which has little popular support, are masking their real objectives by trying to stir up interest using the “pass term limits” battle cry, which has lots of popular support, Tom Foley notwithstanding.

The scheme is to use any popular rallying point (term limits is as good a straw man as anything) to convene the convention. If enough states send delegates appointed by the state legislatures, it doesn’t matter what their original stated purpose was supposed to be. Once in session, they have the power to convert that meeting to an actual constitutional convention. If that is done, they would have the legal authority to do anything they want to do with our Constitution, even to the point of declaring it null and void and instituting a whole new form of government.

Many of us don’t want to take that risk. Don Fotheringham and the John Birch Society are trying to expose the plotters and protect us from ourselves. Richard T. Brown Spokane

Regional flights need to be developed

I enjoyed reading your recent Sunday Business article concerning Alaska Air’s changing viewpoint of the Spokane travel market. I agree that Alaska/Horizon Air does provide a valuable service to this community. It is good news to hear that they plan on offering more routes out of Spokane International Airport (SIA)!

Recently, Horizon stopped direct service to Lewiston. I’m saddened by this fact, since it marks the last regional flights from Spokane to the smaller regional cities in the Northwest (excluding Montana). Currently, Spokane is without direct service to smaller cities in North Idaho, Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon. To get there from here you must connect at either Seattle or Portland. I’m surprised Alaska/Horizon air doesn’t take advantage of these routes to feed into larger aircraft at SIA for California. These routes do provide a much-needed service to the traveling public - business and pleasure - especially during the unpredictable winter months.

If Alaska wants to increase their passenger numbers here, maybe they need to develop their regional flights here. Since both airlines are based in Seattle, I’m not sure if they ever will. Perhaps the airport administration here needs to be proactive and concentrate their efforts on this front. Daniel L. Bielenberg Spokane

A sour note for fiddlers

I thought it was interesting that the only thing reported about the Northwest Regional Fiddle Contest was a photo of a grandfather consoling his 5-year-old granddaughter not to be afraid to perform on Saturday in the pee-wee division of this event (March 31).

Why is it that the news media have no problem reporting all the negative things, but choose to ignore a positive, uplifting story of talented children, teenagers and adults?

By not covering this event, Spokane has lost out knowing about the great talent we have here and the young people and adults from this area who have won at this contest and have been certified to compete at the national fiddle contest in Weiser, Idaho, in June.

I personally would like to see an article done on the Northwest Old Time Fiddlers organization. There are many adults and families who help train and teach these young people. This organization is truly family oriented and the young people who are involved with this organization are all winners.

Thank you, Old Time Fiddlers, for sharing your talents with all who attended your annual contest. Delores A. Jones Spokane