Letters To The Editor

IDAHO VIEWPOINTS

Kindnesses call for thanks

Re: Dorothy Kjera, the victim Henry W. Luke reportedly admitted battering:

Our family would like, first, to thank God for saving our mom and grandma’s life on Dec. 3, 1996. It truly is a miracle she lived through the beating she sustained by a senseless act of violence.

Second, thanks for the quick response by 911 paramedics and the TLC they gave her. We’re also grateful to the officers and detectives for their quick arrest of Luke.

We thank our pastor, Mike Bullard, for his tender and unceasing communication with our family. He showed great concern for our community as a whole but most of all for the seniors in our town who felt vulnerable and helpless to an attack like Dorothy’s.

Thanks, too, for the support we felt from our close friends and community and also from surrounding communities. We appreciate the prayers, cards and flowers plus a stuffed animal from an unknown “friend.”

We cannot repay all of you for the love we felt and concern for our mom, grandmother and sister. God bless all of you. The family of Dorothy Kjera Coeur d’Alene

Would someone start making sense?

The Sandpoint High School principal and administrators should be personally responsible for the school’s repairs. It is outrageous to allow 6 feet of snow to build up on a roof.

Secondly, there is no reason for taxpayers to foot the bill to send National Guardsmen from Boise to Sandpoint to shovel snow. There must be plenty of volunteers, unemployed persons and welfare recipients in Sandpoint to shovel snow. Where is the community’s pride? Ray Allen Spokane

HIGHER EDUCATION

Shift funds to community colleges

I commend you for the editorial, “Soaring tuition a national scandal” (“Our view,” Dec. 23). You have touched on a matter deserving the highest attention by federal and state governments, as well as by parents paying taxes, outrageous tuition and other costs.

The costs of a year of college education can no longer be multiplied by four. The latest statistics indicate a bachelor’s degree requires an average of six years. What a rip-off!

Downsizing has made American industry competitive. At times it is necessary. Have you ever heard of downsizing within American education? It should take place at all levels, spearheaded by federal and state governments.

One solution is to better fund community colleges. No educational institutions are more cost-effective. We are blessed statewide and locally with a superb community college system. It meets the needs of most students desiring advanced learning. Take the dollars from the four-year colleges, place a lid on annual tuition and other costs, then funnel those funds to community colleges. This would result in a far more effective system. Claude W. Morris Spokane

MARIJUANA

Leave medical policy to doctors

The Clinton administration’s announcement that it would prosecute doctors who prescribe marijuana is outrageous. That’s none of the federal government’s business.

The government’s business is to follow the advice of a technically competent body such as the American Medical Association .

No branch of the federal government, least of all Congress, is chartered or qualified to exercise medical judgment of any kind. If the AMA thinks a physician is qualified, ethical and practicing within its standards, that should be that.

I remember when Congress was deciding whether doctors could prescribe heroin to terminal cancer patients - also none of its business. Drug addiction is hardly a concern for people dying in agony, and heroin is one of the most effective painkillers known. Since medical use of heroin hasn’t caused a breakdown of society, it’s hard to imagine why anyone thinks marijuana would.

America’s drug problems result from the overwhelming profit margins in street drugs, not from any aspect of the medical profession.

As usual, Congress’ real issues are politics, tired old slogans that appease uninformed voters and, most likely, a great pile of cash somewhere.

Few members of Congress would not sell cocaine on the street if they thought it politically expedient to do so. In fact, someone in the Reagan administration committed treason by allowing the proliferation of crack as a way to improve the (Nicaraguan) Contras’ finances. Congress should be pursuing this wrongdoing instead of interfering in the progress of medicine. Jim McDonald Spokane

Government’s going too far

I can’t believe a government called a democracy would try to stop pain-racked people from getting medicine to relieve their pain. If they’ve never been there, then they don’t know the agony of nerve injury.

How dare they try to stop people from getting relief from this agony?

Do you believe, as I do, that this is going far too far to tolerate? Lillian P. Fleming Spokane

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Mall crowded the disabled out

Ever show up for dinner with the rest of the family, just to find that you’ve no place to sit at the table? So you watch everyone else eat while you go without, your stomach churning from hunger. You’ve been excluded from a basic human need!

This is the way I feel each time I go to NorthTown. What a fine place it is - not! My recent visit left me with the same questions I ask myself each time I go there: Why do I keep going to this place? I can’t ever buy anything here. I can’t even get into the shops to spend my money. My money must be different from everyone else’s. How come someone didn’t tell me this when I got my wheelchair?

Granted, half of a retailer’s income comes from Christmas shoppers. With overstocked stores and all the extra help, this is the busiest time of year for retailers. But that’s no excuse for them to overlook provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Contained within those provisions are my rights to eat with the rest of you. Well, shop with the rest of you, in this case.

No way could a person in a wheelchair make it into the stores as merchandise covered the aisles. So there I’d be, sitting on the outside looking in, watching everyone else buy gifts for their loved ones.

It all hit home when my 6-year-old daughter asked, “Daddy, how come they stack all this junk in your way? How are we going to buy presents for Mama if we can’t get into any of these stores?” Joseph D. Whaley Medical Lake

OTHER TOPICS

Quite a learning experience

In this season of trial by weather, I’ve learned so many things. They are such simple things, they must set a common ground for all of us.

At first, I fussed about all the leaves that hadn’t fallen and been cleared off the lawn. In a day or two, there were huge tree limbs that rendered the leaves insignificant.

Then I began feeling confident and muttering about dodging potholes. Then, the ice and snow made potholes seem, well, you know.

I was so grateful for the return of heat, hot water and power, but it also brought a new thing to admire. Not the latest electronic gadget but all of the things that are efficient without electricity.

I was mourning all of our broken trees; they seemed like relatives back from a war. But I’ve learned to see the incredible beauty. I’ve never seen so much snow. I love the way it mutes the land and makes you listen to your breath. And the days are slowly getting longer - a small but wondrous thing. It is a time to learn patience, a lifetime goal.

It is a time to recognize that we’ll endure, grow and be OK. Time to cherish friends, family, home and pets.

This is what I’ve learned so far.

I’m sure there are many who share these lessons. Vivian Ryan Spokane

It’s about peace, not power

Pertaining to the letter from Paul W. Oman (“Special interests want canyon as plum,” Dec. 14), I am not one of “a few greedy float outfitters” who are interested in lining their pockets.

I am one of millions of citizens who now have, but are losing, our right to partial ownership and say in the management of open, natural areas where once a person could roam, rest and recuperate away from loud, polluting and obtrusive machinery.

We are defending these few protected places despite the fact that they are inclusive of sites once developed or manipulated by man simply because they are the best and last remaining places where the true lovers of this natural world around us can sit and enjoy it, allowing peace into our hearts. Patrick M. Murphy Edwall, Wash.