Letters to the Editor
Keep fighting
for sidewalks,
Lisa Murray
Editor: This is for the Sun’s Springs columnist Lisa Murray. Keep fighting to get those sidewalks in the Springs. It is a disgrace that mothers have to push their baby strollers alongside zipping cars, with no safety zone whatsoever. Thank you for trying.
Pierrette Duriez
Sonoma home feels like prison
Editor: Having decided to move back to Sonoma in March, the place where my fiancee grew up that had so many cherished memories, we find ourselves questioning quite often if we indeed made the right decision.
The first week we were enjoying our new home, I was walking from my car to my front door when a young man about 20 years old rushed past me and insisted I let him into my home. Within seconds there were two police vehicles, lights and guns drawn at my new acquaintance and myself. Luckily I did as I was told when I was asked if I knew who he was. As they cleaned up the situation, I found out later that he had just tried to carjack a Jaguar driver on Fifth Street West.
Within several months of moving back, we were reminded that no little town is safe, especially when returning home to find an unwanted guest looting our home. He not only tried several windows and doors before damaging a glass sliding door to gain access, but did several hundred dollars’ worth of damage in the process.
I chased him out of the house and to a nearby fence where he had previously set up one of several escape routes. The sheriff’s response time was 15 minutes (especially when they couldn’t understand which side of Hwy 12 we live on). Feeling like a scene out off “Cops,” they surrounded the block and to no avail were able to find the suspect.
After a close inspection of our residence and touching everything in sight (then refusing to search for fingerprints) the deputies notified us of the following: “We live in the highest crime rated area in all of Sonoma County” and “burglary and crimes such as ours are not that high on the priority list.”
We now live inside a prison it seems at times, too afraid to leave a window open for air or a door open for a second. Our street is covered with litter from parties at which people drink liquor from the store down the street. The same garbage from last week is still there because we live 200 feet outside city borders and no city street sweepers can do the job.
Sonoma is like so many other small towns that we have lived in. The people seem not to care, the police are understaffed and those who hold public office are too worried about image to deal with any threats.
Being from a small town south of here I have to question if my taxes are being used for the good of the community or is the good of the community not for the people?
Michael Anthony Donegan
Let ‘unjust joan’ go
Editor: I just read Christina Del Vecchio’s Aug. 31 letter to the editor about just joan (“’unjust joan’s column appalling”) and totally agree with Del Vecchio’s point. From there I looked up and read joan’s column “The way it was for my co-workers in Jerusalem” and was totally appalled by her message.
I am asking for you to consider letting go of her as a contributor to your newspaper as I feel there is no place for bias like that to be printed in a local community newspaper. There are enough problems and misconceptions in the national media and I don’t feel there is any place for this message in a local paper that reports on our community and local issues. I say stop unjust joan now!
Howard Morris
Joan’s factual
reportage not
anti-Semitism
Editor: Regarding the public expressions of disapproval of a recent “just joan” column and those who seem to be calling for The Sun to discontinue her column, I would like to say that I am confident that the editor of The Sun is among those Americans who believe in and support freedom of the press, one of our cherished democratic ideals. Therefore, I am also confident that Joan Huguenard’s column is not in danger of being dropped from this paper on the grounds of being anti-Semitic. I recall that she reported an account of what she observed from her upper story window, two Israeli policemen abusing a Palestinian and ceasing the abuse when they saw that she was watching.
Are the people who object to this statement of fact suggesting that when a person is observed being the victim of abuse, the incident should not be reported out of the fear of being unfair to the perpetrator? One cannot count on the truth to be pleasant or something we would like to hear. Those who believe that criticism of the foreign policy of the state of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism might find Professor Norman Finkelstein’s recent book helpful. It is titled “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.” (University of California Press.)
Catherine Holt
Joan helps me
suspend judgment
Editor: What I appreciate most about Joan Huguenard’s writing is its ability to suspend, if only temporarily, my mind’s propensity to sort issues into piles of black/white, either/or, right/wrong and then make a conclusion and shut the door. Instead I am led to a place where judgement suspends and a picture unfolds of a world of many shades, nuances and complexities. Her recent columns reflecting on her experiences in the Holy Land have opened my heart to a greater place of compassion for all those human beings attempting to live their daily lives in the constant shadow of fear and violence. Thank you for Joan.
Rosalie Steward
Petaluma
