Letters to the Editor 7/3

Let’s enjoy our ritual

Bird-brains in Morro Bay are snuffing Fourth of July fireworks because it might ruffle the feathers of our fine feathered friend, the snowy plover.

Plumage over patriotism. What a bunch of loons. Just another example of environmental lunacy on parade.

A benign laser show that pays more homage to birds than country will not inspire oohs and ahhs from the crowd. But never mind visceral magic, lifelong chills and love of country. The ethos of the day says flag-waving three hours a year is an atavistic, jingoistic, throwaway notion worthy of a dirt nap, not to mention a danger to the plover, a beautiful bird whose birthright to the shoreline exceeds mine.

A more acute danger to this migratory fowl might be the thousands of spend-happy tourists who flock to the seaside town, trampling the plover’s roped-off habitat with cowboy-booted footfalls. I watch them every weekend. Aren’t they a threat to the plover? Don’t they create angst for this endangered creature?

When the wingnuts in Morro Bay replace tourists with holograms of tourists, they can replace Fourth of July fireworks with a laser show.

Until then, let us commoners enjoy our pagan ritual of fire, cooked red meat and a night sky that goes boom.

Dan Stephens

Atascadero

Hooked on the grid

In reference to Michael Hobbs’ letter of June 25 suggesting we “shut down our electronic gadgets and seize the day,” I have gotten rid of my cell phone and feel liberated!

It’s like I suddenly have a piece of me back that others owned. If I do need a phone, almost every person on the planet has one in their pocket.

I have a new roommate whose daughter is 11 years old. She is very bright. She and her friends are hooked up to the grid 24/7. They get together to Twitter and sit in front of the computer on Facebook and upload their home-made videos on YouTube. iPhone bells are constantly going off and a cell phone is always held against their ears.

Even while making a run to another’s house, they Twitter while walking down the street.

I suggested we play chess. During the game, her fingers where flying across her Blackberry, talking with one of her friends. It’s madness!

When I was her age, there where kids all over the place outside flying kites, throwing balls, riding bikes, climbing trees and catching bugs.

Now school is out, and there is not a kid in sight.

They are all hidden away, hooked up to the grid. Good grief.

Mickey Weedon

San Luis Obispo

Poor choices

Regarding the June 28 editorial about the Joshua Houlgate murder case, I believe it was stupid of The Tribune to select portions of the trial it thought pertinent, much of it hearsay dug up by the defense!

The Tribune didn’t know the Josh we knew, the man who helped my grandson assemble his Christmas bicycle. Nor did it know the man we all cried for at a recent tree-planting ceremony. It doesn’t know about the tears my grandson shed when he heard of Josh’s demise. Nor does the editorial mention his beaming smile as he would light up a room as he walked in.

And truly, in reflection, I hope the editorial board members can look back on their own lives and remember poor choices and stupidity.

James River

Cambria

Knights in pickups

In early June, I was taking some pictures for a project about Los Osos, a place derided by some — but where I had a typical Los Osos moment. Pulling to the side of Los Osos Valley Road, I put the right wheel of my car into a ditch.

Within 30 seconds, at least six young men had pulled over and were discussing how to right my car. Five minutes later, a chain was attached and the car pulled back onto flat ground.

To my knights in shining white pickup trucks, please accept my heartfelt thanks.

Theresa Perry

Los Osos

Medicare myth

A recent letter-writer wrote that single-payer Medicare “works” — how naive!

In the first place, we can’t really call this a “single-payer” system, since every subscriber and every taxpayer pays and pays and pays at ever-higher rates for services whose fees increase far and beyond any annual cost-of-living increases.

Secondly, this “working” system is headed for certain bankruptcy, perhaps not in that writer’s lifetime, but most certainly in the lifetime of most of our children.

Will he still say his Medicare is “working” when the bean-counter bureaucrats deny him a life-extending surgery because he’s “too old” to amortize sufficient benefits from that expensive surgery?

Just ask any British or Canadian senior citizen about his wonderful single-payer medical insurance. You know: the ones that currently come to the USA when they need that life-extending surgery they can’t get at home?

Check it out!

Hildy Owen

Morro Bay

O’Reilly wrong again

O’Reilly warns us to not trust the media. In a recent column, he states that the New York Times ran a left-leaning, biased health care poll citing that almost twice as many respondents voted for Obama.

Fair enough. But he conveniently neglected to look over on Page 9 of the poll, where 63 percent did not identify as Democrats. Google it.

That means that it’s quite possible to vote for Obama, not vote for McCain or be independent and think that a government-administered health program would be best for the country. That’s really what the poll found. But that doesn’t fit in with the right-wing talking points noise machine.

Sorry, Bill. Wrong again. Can’t trust the O’Reilly spin zone media.

Charlie Lawrence

Paso Robles