Letters To The Editor

WASHINGTON STATE

Around here, Goliaths get their way

Re: “Freeway deemed `wasteful.”’

The other night I walked through my neighborhood. All was quiet except for the haunting yips and howls of coyotes and quail scattering at my approach. There were fresh deer tracks in my garden.

This peaceful stroll was clouded by the knowledge that there are those who would destroy this setting with the roar of four lanes of vehicles traveling at high speed, overhead lighting and a wall of exhaust.

The Washington state Department of Transportation, after six years of study, public input and federal approval, has abandoned two previously proposed routes for the northern two miles of the North Spokane freeway in favor of a last-minute change which punches the freeway through a sylvan neighborhood described by the project engineer as “pristine.” Why?

After wading through the bureaucratic doublespeak from DOT officials, it seems to boil down to the relative strength of the opponents. Of the two routes considered in the “final” environmental impact study, both were opposed by Kaiser and other politically powerful forces. By contrast, the latest route (hatched this winter and formally announced in mid-February) runs through a neighborhood of citizens of average means and limited political experience. In this contest between ants and elephants, the DOT is selecting a route calculated to produce the least resistance, because those in or near its path have limited resources to oppose it.

When the little guy loses, so does the community. David D. Kirkman, president Garden City-Mead Neighborhood Coalition, Spokane

How nice for international drivers

I followed with interest the national report by the watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense and Friends of the Earth, detailing the North Spokane freeway as one of the 50 most wasteful road projects in America (“Freeway deemed `wasteful,”’ April 28). Washington state Department of Transportation spokesman Al Gilson dismissed the report’s findings, saying the DOT was never contacted for information.

DOT may be swallowing a dose of the same medicine it has offered residents of the Garden City- Mead neighborhood. After years of attending hearings and viewing maps of the freeway route approved in 1997, we had to learn from rumors late this winter that a new route had been designed - one that would cut through our back yards! I called DOT; it didn’t call me.

DOT finally told me the freeway is needed to bring traffic from Canada to Mexico. We won’t get to work any faster because it won’t link up to downtown, the Valley or the West Plains area. Kaiser didn’t want a road through its bare land, so my long-established neighborhood gets the freeway instead. And yes, it will cost at least what the Taxpayers for Common Sense reported, $875 million. I think the report had it right, even if they didn’t talk to DOT. Jeanne Rees Spokane

Nighttime is the right time

Re: the recent article about summer construction, “Getting there.” When asked why the state Department of Transportation doesn’t work at night, the response was that it was hard to see at night.

I have been in many states and countries where, in critical, congested areas, the work is done on weekends and at night. I had asked this same question at a board meeting and was told that it was too costly. It seems that if other areas find this a resourceful tool when construction is done in heavy traffic, maybe Spokane ought to get with the program and not lag behind, doing things the same way just because they have always done it this way. Can’t DOT buy outdoor lights? Do the road crews balk at working at night? Would the cost be too prohibitive even though the work time would be cut down?

There are many hot spots that need work. Traffic tie-ups and road closures during weekdays undoubtedly lengthen the time needed to complete the work. Doing it at night could shorten the time to completion for those doing the work and reduce the period of inconvenience for drivers. Shirley Meyer Veradale

Thanks for transportation budget

The legislative special session next week should produce an agreed-upon transportation budget - one of great interest to Spokane and Eastern Washington. Especially federal and state dollars reaching initial amounts of $120 million for the city’s north-south freeway, a NAFTA corridor.

Some of us, as citizens who care, pressed the funding to these levels through unrelenting public speaking, telephone calls, letter writing and individual trips to the Legislature during session.

The final thanks, however, belong with the leaders in the House and Senate at Olympia; people like Sens. Bob Morten, Lisa Brown and Mary Haugen, Reps. Karen Schmidt, Ruth Fisher, Brad Benson, Jeff Gombosky and Clyde Ballard, and Gov. Gary Locke, respectively. Marc Ramsey Spokane

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Funding critical for infants

Many of my mental health field colleagues are asking the Legislature to pass Senate Bill 5163. It will allow welfare mothers to remain at home with their children during the first year of their child’s life. We now have solid scientific evidence underscoring the vital importance of stability and consistency in care giving during the first 12 months of life. Both are essential for the wiring of healthy brain circuitry.

The Republican leadership opposes SB 5163, saying equity must be established with working mothers who are required to return to work. Unfortunately, “equity” is a fantasy. There is little competent infant child care available in our state. Thus, many mothers will be forced to leave their young children with whoever can be found on any given day: a neighbor, a friend of a neighbor, a casual boyfriend. In the crucial early months, when over 70 percent of the brain’s development occurs, it is extremely dangerous to leave children within unstable and inconsistent care. These children are at high risk of experiencing an attachment disorder. Research confirms that such children grow up showing signs of severe psychopathology, delinquency and poor parenting into the next generation.

Unfortunately, we all pay the price. With the recent events in Colorado as a painful wake-up call, I ask each reader to call the Legislative Hotline (1-800-562-6000) and ask the governor, your state senator and representatives to pass SB 5163 during the upcoming special session. Dr. Kent T. Hoffman, pediatric psychotherapy Marycliff Institute, Spokane

We must meet mental health needs

Re: the May 5 letter from Harry and Ann Holmberg. Due to her mental illness, the Holmbergs’ daughter has committed a terrible crime and is now facing a lifetime of imprisonment. I believe no one, save her doctors, knew just how sick she was.

The mentally ill in this area are treated as though they are lazy, useless members of society. I am appalled at the justice systems’ attitude toward severely handicapped individuals.

Why can’t we provide a support network of caring, knowledgeable professionals and laymen to this community of people? I can’t figure out how we allow drunken drivers to continue to drive, children to buy and sell weapons, industrial waste to destroy our planet, and yet do nothing to help the desperate people who need treatment for diseases they cannot cure! When will our values be what we preach? It doesn’t seem like we’re going into the year 2000 but more like falling back to the Middle Ages.

Mental illness affects all of us. As taxpayers and members of society, we all pay for the destruction caused. Stop prosecuting adults for marijuana and kids for tobacco, and we might have enough resources to help those who really need and want help. We must put our priorities in the right place before it’s too late and we end up like so many other countries that have madmen running their governments. Dawn M. Wiksten Coeur d’Alene

Keep kids out of smoking areas

I was in a downtown Spokane dining establishment recently and was shocked at the number of small children in the smoking area. We all know how harmful secondhand smoke is to everyone, children especially.

How can owners and managers of these establishments let small children be exposed to this risk? Parents are ultimately responsible to keep their children from harm but can’t we at least take steps in the right direction by making it illegal for children to be in the smoking section? Young children aren’t allowed in bars where liquor is being served. Why are they permitted in a smoke-infested area? If parents cannot wait until after their meal to smoke a cigarette, away from the child, I question how responsible they are.

All that needs to be done is to inform customers that they may not sit in the smoking area if they have a young child with them.

To parents who say this violates their rights, I say consider your children’s right to be healthy. Jamileh Parker Fairchild Air Force Base

VIOLENCE

Adults have let things get this bad

I remember a kinder, gentler time, when every comic book and boys magazine had ads for Daisy rifles. It was every boy’s dream (and some girls’) to save enough of their allowance to buy a gun. By the time a boy was 9 or 10, his dad had relented and bought him a .22 and taught him how to use it safely and responsibly.

Of course in those days, a boy came home to a mother who had a snack ready and was waiting to hear about his day at school. He had chores to do before supper and then his homework. After supper there was time to ride his bike and play with the neighbors before saying his prayers and going to bed by 9 p.m.

I fully expected the National Rifle Association to shoulder the blame for the shooting spree. Friends, the NRA didn’t put assault weapons in those boys’ hands and the NRA didn’t teach them to make bombs. The NRA didn’t teach them to put swastikas on their sleeves and to hate their fellow students.

We all have to take responsibility, for we no longer require the teaching of ethics. There is no discipline in the schools. There are no consequences for misbehavior or bad judgment.

Everyone must have a good self-image, even if it means making someone else look bad. You make fun of someone else to camouflage your own inadequacies.

Adults are supposed to confront and take control but we have lost credibility. We are afraid to confront. This is why there are adults and children. Adults are supposed to be there to help children, who are not able to control themselves yet.

We have let our kids down! Shirley Hethorn Oldtown, Idaho

Take a lesson from Columbine

Three simple but most important lessons are to be learned from the April 20 Colorado school tragedy. First, evil is everywhere, even in our precious schools. Second, students should be united not separated by cliques, small groups or outcasts. They must welcome all students and be kind to all as they live and learn together for the benefit of all. Third, students should have eyes and ears open to possible warnings or dangers and relate such to teachers or principal to be looked into.

These are easy to remember points for all students to ponder. Eileen L. Wilson Spokane

Goths terribly misunderstood

In response to Jonathan Lundquist’s April 18 letter, I feel as though a few facets of the gothic subculture should be presented. Since the shootings in Colorado, this group has come under massive fire from many directions but often, the most from people who don’t know what a gothic really is.

Neither music nor dress defines a “goth.” The gothic church is not defined by clothes but by a way of thinking and individuality. Those who are of the gothic culture (which I do not belong to) wear a wide variety of clothes, from the stereotypical black garb to bluejeans and Strawberry Shortcake shirts. Not all are the depressed individuals stereotyped by so many, but are creative and, believe it or not, very perky people.

Lundquist mentions that goths listen to “Marilyn Mason, (read) the vampire books of Anne Rice … and a few hold the literal belief that they are vampires.” None of these things has anything to do with being goth. Most goths despise the fact that Manson and vampires are associated with their culture because that’s not what goth is. To give you an idea of how wide and varied the tastes of those in this culture are, their music ranges from Disney soundtracks, Loreena McKennitt and Dead Can Dance (a very soft and gentle music despite the name) to The Cure, Tori Amos and Type O. Though some of them listen to Manson and think they are vampires, this does not make them any more gothic than those who listen to the Disney soundtracks.

To all, I hope you will understand that stereotyping an entire culture through the acts of but a couple of boys would be comparable to stereotyping an entire race of the act of one member of that race. Emily E. Dahlgran Moscow

Teach kids some leveling, acceptance

Seems we are all looking for someone to blame in the school shootings that are so out of control. How about placing some of the blame on students who think they are so much better than everyone else? The jocks and the good-looking studs who roam the school campuses like some kind of gods, and the beautiful girls who have their special little groups and wouldn’t dream of speaking to someone who didn’t quite fit in.

Not everyone can be perfect but all students have a right to be part of the school without being teased, bullied and harassed on a daily basis until they are driven to an uncontrolled hatred so they feel like blowing everyone away.

Maybe schools and parents should pay a little more attention to this and try to teach children that everyone has a right to be themselves. Lois J. Mundel Spokane

U.S. AND THE WORLD

Some Kosovars already here

There was an error in your May 6 Associated Press story which referred to people arriving at Fort Dix as “the first Kosovo refugees to arrive in the United States.”

In our parish, we have two families that came from Kosovo last November, one from Pristina and one from Pec.

The family from Pristina (mother, father, and two boys - one with a heart condition which required immediate surgery) arrived with no belongings except a bag smaller than a briefcase. The family from Pec (three children with their parents, joined a couple of months ago by a grandmother) just received word that two nephews still in Kosovo were killed when our bombs destroyed that bus last week. One of the boys from that family also lost a 14-year-old playmate who was one of six young men killed back in December when a KLA gunman machine-gunned a coffee shop in Pec.

These people were victims of ethnic cleansing in Croatia, among the 200,000 driven from their homes in a single week in August 1995, most of whom are still among the 600,000 refugees living in Yugoslavia who are now being victimized yet again by the NATO bombing. (I assume that human suffering still counts, even when the victims are Serbs.)

We should remember that the people who are suffering from NATO’s attacks are innocent civilians, whether Albanian or Serb, along with young men drafted into their country’s armed forces. And that the only people who are not suffering are Milosevic and his cronies. The Rev. Stephen Supica Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, Spokane

For real friendship, look to Taiwan

During his recent trip to the United States, Zhu Rong-Ji, the prime minister of the communist People’s Republic of China, refused to renounce the use of force against the Republic of China (Taiwan). He insists Taiwan is legitimately a part of his “people’s republic,” which is responsible for the deaths of as many as 100 million Chinese, the Cultural Revolution and, more recently, the Tiananmen massacre.

Taiwan was ruled by Japan from the turn of the century until 1945. From 1945 to 1948, it was a province of the Nationalist Party (Kuo Min Tang) of Chang Kai Shek. In 1948, the nationalists retreated to Taiwan, where they established a government that has since evolved into a true representative democracy. Taiwan has governed itself for over 50 years and has never been a part of the communist mainland. On that basis alone it would seem that Taiwan’s right to exist is at least as legitimate as that of Israel.

President Clinton has equivocated on the defense of Taiwan. His policy is difficult to understand in that Taiwan is a highly successful, capitalistic democracy, in contrast to the People’s Republic. (One cannot help but consider the effect Zhu’s 1996 campaign contributions are having on this administration’s foreign policy.)

For my part, if Taiwan is attacked, I intend to offer my services to assist in the defense of a freedom-loving democracy that has consistently supported U.S. Far Eastern policy for the last 50 years. George A. Bratina Spokane