Letters to the Editor

Moose Lodge
not for sale

Editor: What a surprise to learn that according to Bob Kowal, CEO of the Sonoma Valley Hospital, the hospital is purchasing the property owned by the Moose Lodge on Broadway. Let me assure you that the Moose Lodge is not now, nor have we ever been, in negotiations to sell the property to the hospital. Mr. Kowal has done a disservice to the members of the Lodge by even suggesting he has the property “sewed up.”
That would require a vote by the Moose Board, a vote by the membership, and approval by Moose International. None of this has taken place and isn’t very likely to. Hopefully, this will clarify our position in this matter.
Russ Hurley, Moose Lodge Governor

War in Iraq
a local issue

Editor: On Feb. 7, the Sonoma City Council will debate and vote on a resolution calling on the President and Congress to develop and implement a clear timetable for a humane, orderly and comprehensive withdrawal of military personnel from Iraq. The resolution was placed on the agenda by councilman Ken Brown. A primary argument for discussion will be whether or not the war and occupation is an issue that should be taken on by local governments. I contend that it is, and in point of fact almost 300 local governments across the United States in the last three years have passed resolutions calling for “immediate” or “orderly and rapid” withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.
There are many arguments to be made as to why this issue has local relevance, effects and impacts, but no one has said it better or made the case more succinctly than Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower some 50 years ago: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: A modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”
Is the Iraq war a local issue for local debate by our elected officials and our community? In an earlier time when another war was raging, Martin Luther King Jr. said that silence in such times was “betrayal.”
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
Come to the city council meeting on Feb. 7 and speak to an issue that transcends local politics and touches all our lives irrespective of locale.
Will Shonbrun

Are deputies Taser trigger-happy?

Editor: If Julia Maffei’s son Antonio was shot with a Taser gun in the middle of the chest and shot again in the middle of his neck, he could not have been resisting arrest which is the only time this police procedure is permitted. Whatever happened to “protect and serve”? Whatever happened to martial-arts training? Is a trigger-happy deputy working the streets of our beautiful community?
Elli Larrieu

Wales not as
poor as Beruit

Editor: We read with interest the Dec. 14 story in FineLife of farmyard nurseries written by Shann Nix Honey about Richard Bramley’s dream to put Wales “on the map” at Chelsea.
Medwyn Williams of Anglesey (Wales) has already received 10 gold medals for his efforts, along with Penhow Nurseries near Newport (Wales) winning gold year after year.
Our visit to Chelsea that won us a gold medal was on behalf of The National Auricula and Primula Society and we, like Richard, had no sponsor. We were two enthusiastic people with energy, imagination and faith in our ideas. We were not daunted by the big boys; they were kind, friendly and keen to see us win.
Further along her column Ms. Honey suggests that Wales suffered poverty on a scale equivalent to Beirut when Margaret Thatcher closed the mines. What an outrageous comparison! I doubt that the English are rushing to Beirut to buy old stone cottages. Visitors to Wales, including those that read your newspaper, would see through this slight on the Welsh people and their national dress – sorry Shann – not a servant’s costume.
Pat Fisher

Good film, blog
sites to see

Editor: Africa will break your heart. Things are amazingly bad there, in too many places. Sometimes a good, old-fashioned rousing adventure movie can teach us a lot and stimulate the blood and show us horrific circumstances about which we might, someday, somehow, do something.
So go see – and don’t take the kids – the film “Blood Diamond.” Shop locally, think globally. This film will tear you open and inspire, entertain and inform.
Plus here’s my response to Larry Barnett’s recent column in the Sun, somewhat aping the vacuity of most blogsites and saying how silly they were. Sure. An easy target. And if you like knitting go to claudiasblog.net and from there to dozens of others equally delightful. Want to keep up with the hospital coalition? Check out svhcc.blogspot.com. If you want a local poet, beginning to sing out via the free outlet of blogging, try his opening invitation at uprisingpoetry.blogspot.com.
For an eyeful, google truth / in / journalism / blog and see all the alternatives to the so-called news. (kevinsite.net, tomglocer.com, come up loud and clear, americablog.blogspot.com seems to have something to do with John Edwards, and so on.). For a 10-year crusade (since the author was 15 years old) to unmask distortions, observe theblackvault.com.
And, of course, if you like what I write for the papers, I put up a new essay each day on one of my three sites, one devoted to happiness/ awareness/ ecology/ slowing down; another to feldenkrais/self improvement/ movement/coming out of the ongoing sleep; and the third devoted to health, food, weight loss, clarity, tai chi and so on. They can all be tracked down via slowsonoma.com.
Thanks, and enjoy the search for something worthwhile among all the trivial and “entertaining.”
Chris Elms