Letters to the Editor

Editor:

Your supervisor is at it again. Jake McGoldrick wants to trample on the rights of voters to prevail in an election. Not satisfied with unsuccessful attempts to undo the will of the voters, he wants to outlaw the right of people to speak freely about matters critical to them. All this smoke hides the true intentions of Comrade Jake and his tenant extremist backers. In the name of reform, they seek to suppress free speech. He would be wise to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln, who said, "You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all the people some of the time. But you cannot fool all the people all the time."

We are not fooled by Comrade Jake. Remember this in 2004.

Ted Loewenberg

Editor:

Maybe the greatest irony with the gophers in Golden Gate Park (Richmond Review, August 2001) is that, in killing them, we are causing their proliferation. If you have a viable population (and rodents certainly are), nature compensates by causing the remaining animals to breed more.

At Crissy Field at the Presidio, gophers are allowed to live in peace and aerate the soil as only they do best. Why do we always solve wildlife problems with the "kill, kill, kill" mentality when these animals commit no crime in trying to survive like anyone else?

Easy answers are not the right answers ­ why not lower our standards and try to co-exist by avoiding plants gophers like to eat? The "diphacinone" used in the park is an anti-coagulant, causing the gophers to literally bleed to death. With so-called "pest" animals, you're not supposed to care, but they are still living, feeling creatures. And what of secondary poisoning to birds and dogs and feral cats?

As for gopher mounds being dangerous, in 13 years of riding a bicycle through the park and seeing countless runs, I have yet to see how a marked mound of dirt can twist an ankle, especially with a small hole that is rarely open.

Your article concludes that, after all, gophers are good for turning over the soil ­ maybe that should have been the first sentence and the story developed from there.

Patricia Briggs
Eleventh Avenue resident

Editor's Note: The deadline for all letters to the editor is the 20th of the month. Please make letters brief and include a name and contact number. Letters will remain confidential upon request but can not be published anonymously.