Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Letters

Only preservation rules will save our heritage

We shouldn't need a law to preserve our history, but the sad truth is that we do. Some people have more money than taste, and to them an older home is just something to tear down and replace.

Older homes are a priceless, irreplaceable part of our heritage and when they're gone, or remodeled beyond recognition, then the community as a whole suffers.

Please, from someone who lives in a 100-year-old home in Monte Sereno, I'm begging the new City Council to do the right thing, not only for our future but for our past.

Lana Malloy
Monte Sereno

Earlier historic structure needs to be protected

Monte Sereno seems to be having a problem with historic structures.

Monte Sereno would do well to look at the structure the founding fathers built in 1787 and repaired in 1791. This historic structure is called the Constitution.

The Constitution handles the Monte Sereno problem in a very simple manner: "... nor be deprived of ... private property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."

In other words, if you want to control my property, buy it or shut up.

Ed Steffani
Monte Sereno

Article portrayed transsexuals accurately

Regarding the article about transsexuals by Dale Bryant in the Dec. 18 issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times:

This article was well-written, informative and unbiased. I would like to offer much praise for these educational, open-minded and sensitive insights into a world which is too often fraught with unnecessary pain and suffering over a problem which the sufferer did not choose and did not create.

All too often, the transgendered are portrayed as "freaks" who "choose" to live in a "counterculture" lifestyle, rather than the more true but poignant reality that they are unwittingly and unwillingly trapped within bodies that do not match the souls within them.

I am a lawyer in Northern California, and my partner in practice is transgendered. Although I was not familiar with the problem before, I have now had an all-too-close look at the suffering and loneliness it can create for those talented, many times brilliant, but tortured persons who are unfortunate enough to be afflicted in this manner. Through my partner's travails to accomplish transition, I have learned much about the world she has had to endure to free the person inside her. From observation alone, I can attest that her transition was not a lifestyle choice; it was a necessity if she was to continue to exist and maintain sanity.

It takes great personal courage for any person to make major changes in their life; the transgendered in transition are walking examples of that courage just by daring to exist in the forms which match their souls. In their daily lives, they endure an ungodly amount of denigration by ignorant and limited persons who do not understand what they have seen when they look at the unusually tall woman or diminutive man passing them by.

Many thanks to Dale Bryant and to therapist Mildred Brown for offering a look within and education to those fortunate enough to have avoided the challenges of transgendered life themselves, and open-minded enough to learn something new.

Allison E. Moss
Sacramento

TV shows don't cause teen problems

I see where a survey of Silicon Valley teenagers indicates that the little rascals think the proposed TV rating system is a bummer, and they are going to watch what they damn well please on the idiot box regardless of what anybody says.

Bully for them!

At the international academic stratum, our precious little darlings might be behind every country in the world with the exception of Lower Slobovia, but when it comes to realistic street smarts they have no equals.

For example, they know that very little kids do not bludgeon other very little kids to death because they saw it done on TV. Nothing like that ever appears on the tube. It's too gross for even that insensitive entertainment medium. Real life is where that kind of action takes place.

They know that older kids do not gun down other other kids because they took in a movie on gang warfare over the weekend. They do it to protect their turf, which is usually defined by drugs sales.

And teenagers do not indiscriminately hop in an out of bed with the opposite sex because their favorite movie stars are extraordinarily active in that department. They do it because the act is instinctive and pleasant, and the moral leaders or our society have failed to convince them that there is anything sinful or wrong with it.

Actually, the country would be better-served if we stopped worrying about what young people watched on television for recreation and concentrated on making our loveable kumquats toe the line in more important venues.

For starters, how about insisting that they know how to read and write before entering college?

Frank J. Stagnaro
Los Gatos

CORRECTION

An item in the Jan. 1 "Year in Review" issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times indicated that the new owners of the Los Gatos Lodge called a meeting of all the employees and told them they were terminated. In fact, it was representatives of Allegheny Properties, the previous owners, who terminated the employees. The new owner has subsequently rehired many of those employees.