The other day when I was replacing a roll of paper towels, I took the expended tube, and, after puckering up my lips and sticking my tongue between them to make a "raspberry" sound, blew into the end of it. I got a melodious grunting sort of sound, like a didjeridu. I made a few lip-tongue changes to get slightly different kinds of grunts.

That tube was only 11 inches long.

I then stepped into the garage, where I have a number of other tubes. I tried a thin-walled cardboard one about 30 inches long and got a superior melodious grunt. That tube had formerly been the core for a roll of plastic sheeting used long ago.

Another tube was a spare golf club shaft protector about 40 inches long, which had a different and more melodious tone.

In all cases, lip and tongue position affected the outcome, occasionally with rather vulgar results. I even tried a 60 inch length of 1¹/2 inch sched 40 tubing with favorable results.

When I finished with this experimentation, I found my lips slightly tender; any new aficionado should be cautious.

Throwaway tubing of all sorts is available in our society from grocery, hardware and fabric outlets to keep the experimenter going for years.

That is, if he or she is content to make sounds like those of an elephant passing gas.

—R.A. Blais, Cupertino


Broken barricade subject of a long city hall saga

The other day I received a traffic ticket. "No big deal," you say? Well, you're right--it wasn't a big deal in itself, but it was the starting point of a strange journey through the local bureaucracy.

For approximately 15 years there has been a barricade at Bollinger Road and Kim Street in Cupertino. The purpose of the barricade is to restrict commuter traffic on a portion of Kim Street between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m.

I was cited recently by a Santa Clara County Deputy Sheriff for passing through the restricted area even though the barricade was not closed.

I don't drive Bollinger Road daily, but I have driven it often enough and have come to rely on the barricade operating in the morning hours. Yes, there has always been a sign that states "No traffic between 6 and 9 a.m." but quite frankly, I depend on the barricade.

I felt the ticket was unfair and decided to go to court.

I thought that proof of the malfunctioning barrier would be germane to my future traffic court appearance. I went to the Cupertino Department of Public Works and requested a written statement verifying that the barrier was not working. The first person I spoke with was Vicki Guapo. She said that she knew that the barrier was no longer working, but she refused to write a statement to that effect. She sent me to maintenance, which was not the proper department to handle my request.

Later, I spoke by phone with Glen Goupfert, the assistant director of public works. After some wrangling, he finally agreed to direct Ms. Guapo to write the requested statement, to be ready the following day. The next day, when I went to pick up the statement, Ms. Guapo said that Mr. Goupfert had not instructed her to write it and that he was out for the day.

At this point I was getting a little curious. All I had wanted was a two-line statement on city letterhead that I could show the traffic judge. The city employees had initially spent a great deal of time trying to avoid writing a statement. Now the promised statement wasn't produced. Was this typical of my city government at work?

My next attempt involved a visit to the Saratoga substation of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, where I spoke with a deputy. He also admitted that he knew that the barrier was not working but refused to provide a written statement to that effect. His reason? Something to the effect that the sheriff's job is enforcement, not conferring "official status" to situations by putting them in writing.

Confused? Yup, me too. Why did so many people readily agree that the barricade had malfunctioned but then refuse to commit that fact to writing?

Is the broken barricade really broken? If it is, why not fix it? Are the revenues generated from fines a disincentive to repairing the barrier?

When I asked why the sheriff's department hadn't provided an officer as a substitute until the barrier was repaired, I was told that they lacked the manpower to do so. Interesting, since they certainly seem to have sufficient personnel to assign an officer to lay in wait on Kim Street with the purpose of citing any motorist who is misled by the barrier's malfunction.

Is there something funny going on here? Or is it just a case of our public employees doing what they do best?

Anybody out there who has been cited for the same offense, please call me at 408.252.8207.

—Peter Tadin, Cupertino


Better to adopt the U.S. children who are in need

I read in the May 28 edition of the Cupertino Courier the story on Americans adopting children from foreign countries. You specifically wrote about Tim and Patricia Zimmerman adopting a little Ukraine-born girl. While we all congratulate Tim and Patricia on their new family member, we as Americans should really look at what is happening.

Every year thousands of Americans race around the world looking for foreign-born children to adopt, especially in countries like Romania, Hungary and the former Soviet Union. These are countries that are in very poor economic conditions and have young mothers who simply do not have the means to raise a child, so they are prime candidates for Americans to adopt their children.

The adoption agencies in the United States are full of little children who are not being adopted because they are mostly black and Latino and not the white, blue-eyed children that you can adopt in the Ukraine.

I would encourage all people who are looking to adopt a child to look here in America first, because there are thousands of children looking for a home and they desperately need your help.

—Jim Carlisle, Cupertino