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Letters
Reader praises Sims for telling 'Untold Tales'
Kudos to Sandy Sims for writing, and to the Saratoga News for printing, "Untold Tales." Sims has presented this sensitive subject in a thoughtful and factual article. Sims puts a human face on a deeply troubling historical narrative. It is one of the best pieces I have seen in the Saratoga News. To me, these survivors are heroes. I marvel at their courage and I am quite sure I would not have been as brave under such inhumane conditions.
Dr. Glenn Earley is another person whom I admire. I have participated in interfaith dialogues under his guidance and have heard him lecture on the Holocaust. His dedication to the survivors with whom he has worked is genuine and heartwarming. I know that the former executive director of the NCCJ, Lil Silberstein, was instrumental in supporting the education program that Dr. Earley heads. Theirs is a labor of love and they are to be commended, as are all the teachers who have invited the survivors into their classrooms.
Marcia O. Kaplan
Sevilla Lane
Good for you, shame on you, says reader
Bravo and kudos to Carl Heintze, whose opinion "Capitalism seems to produce greed," was absolutely brilliant, and as effective as any opinion in any daily newspaper I have read to date on the subject of the Enron debacle.
On the other hand, shame on you. How many times have you published something as an attempt to distance yourselves from the editorial cartoons of Steven DeCinzo?
OK, so the cartoons included in the insert are not your responsibility, but you cannot hide behind the fact of his employment relationship as an independent contractor in order to separate your newspaper and staff from his negative posture, and acerbic and sophomoric attitude.
In that he is an independent contractor, that means that each time you have inserted one of his pieces, you made a conscious decision to do so. If you are contractually obligated to run his material, I would expect the IRS to rule that in fact he is an employee.
Just how far could you distance yourself from his work if it were ever adjudged slanderous or libelous? Surely your pockets are deeper than his.
In my view, his work diminishes the tone of an otherwise useful and amicable journal and chronicle of our town and neighborhoods.
Alan Caras
Campbell
Hillside protection should be a priority in Saratoga
During the past two years, the Saratoga hillsides on Bohlman, Kittridge and Quickert roads have been subjected to inappropriate hillside development. Retaining walls more than 20 feet high, stretching the length of the building site, will support huge homes several stories high sitting on the edge. This is not compatible with hillside development written into the city code. We think it was an irresponsible action on the part of the city of Saratoga to have granted these variances.
In January, the planning commission considered an application for [the Husted property on] Kittridge Roadwhich they later did not approve when the vote was taken. We would like to thank the members of the planning commission who voted against this excessive hillside development. We believe that the members who voted against this application for excessive variances took the right action.
There is now an open policy window that needs to be addressed by the residents of Saratoga. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors recently moved hillside protection to a high priority and have hired the first of their consultants for a "habitat conservation plan." The city of Saratoga should also take a leading role in hillside protection, as some of the hillsides here above the city are still beautiful.
What is the sense of having standards for building when they can easily be ignored by issuing excessive variances on these unstable Bohlman, Quickert and Kittridge road hillsides? We hope that just for aesthetic reasons to keep some hillside beauty is enough reason for the majority of Saratoga residents to agree that monster homes built on dropoffs where 20-foot retaining walls have to be constructed the full length of the site are inappropriate.
We hope that on the follow-up vote for the Husted application and on the next eight applications now expected in this area for development that a majority of planning commission members will follow through with the decision that hillside protection should take a high priority in Saratoga politics.
Gail and Doug Cheeseman
Kittridge Road
Such a low voter turnout is an ominous sign
The record-low voter turnout of 31 percent in Santa Clara County, and California, is an ominous sign for whatever freedom we have left in the United States.
This lowest voter turnout ever comes on the heels of the greatest curtailment of our civil liberties in U.S. history. Our constitutional freedoms have been eroding for years, but the USA Patriot Act has crystallized this erosion and converted it into an elimination. The Fourth Amendment has been obliterated, and the others sharply reduced.
These primary elections provided the first opportunity to send a message to our elected representatives that we value freedom. Instead, the clear message sent was that the electors do not care and no longer want a say; that voting is a nuisance and a bother.
Among other reasons, the primary elections were important because they provide the choices for the general election in November.
Voting used to be viewed as a civic duty, a sacred responsibility. I wonder how those who do not vote can look their children and grandchildren in the eye, knowing that they are bestowing to them a servile society in place of the more libertarian and egalitarian society that was bequeathed to them.
Thomas Spielbauer
San Jose
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
