 |
|
|
|
|
Speak Out
Columnist doesn't get utility deregulation
I guess columnist Carl Heintze didn't know that there was deregulation in California and that PG&E was required to sell off its generating plants and to buy energy at the price the wholesaler dictates--from power plants PG&E once owned. PG&E is also required by law to sell that same energy at regulated price levels, currently well below the wholesalers price.
PG&E currently is not giving a dividend, and may go bankrupt. Is that in their or our best interest? You can thank Sacramento and the environmental zealots for this mess, and also blame it on poor vision by the big companies in the area like Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems.
No major power plants have been build in the last 10 years. Maybe we should start there.
John Thelen
Nevada Avenue
More thoughts on the holiday season in WG
Enough already about this Christmas tree and decoration business. Rachel Dombro's letter (It's important to remember that we're not all Christians, Jan. 24) struck a nerve.
Assisting with the distribution of over 200 trees to 10 different street coordinators prompted me to respond to reports individuals were falling prey to pressure by neighbors to decorate for the Christmas season.
I would hope those people whom I have the pleasure of delivering to would not be among those who pressure their fellow neighbors. I, personally, am very selfish on this issue. I would love to see 100 percent participation in this event. Can you imagine Willow Glen looking even better than it does now if everyone participated?
However, I am also a realist. This sort of celebration does not touch everyone in the same manner it does me. Christmas means different things to different people and we as a community need to be sensitive to those differences. For me and my family, the decorating of houses and trees on lawns means something other than a "representation of another religion" as Rachel puts it.
As I personally observe, it is a representation of neighbors young and old gathering in their neighborhoods; the one time of the year where you can genuinely observe a community spirit unique to Willow Glen: People, neighbors, interacting and helping each other with those trees and decorations--people who might otherwise not know their neighbors.
No matter what cultural or religious differences exist between us, we all have one thing in common that all the trees and decorations can never undo. By virtue of our location we all "fit into" this great community known as Willow Glen.
Whether or not my neighbors decide to decorate or not, my feelings towards them will never diminish. After all, they are my neighbors. All the lights, trees or the lack of, will never change my point of view.
Steve Denton
Winona Drive
Doctors are overworked
I read with great interest your article on doctors in the Jan. l7 edition of The Willow Glen Resident. Everything that you reported is true. I have been in practice for 36 years and love what I do, but it is getting harder to stay in practice. Rent and malpractice insurance and fees that no longer cover the cost of care keep new physicians from coming and at the same time drive older physicians out.
There is another view that has not been covered: A successful physician generally works 70 to 80 hours a week. When paid a reasonable fee for his services he can usually afford a more expensive automobile and home and send his children to a private school.
Many of the public and the press have accused physicians of being profiteers in disease and berate them for having a nice home. There seemed to be a universal thrill that the "rich" physicians were being brought down a notch or two. This same public wants their physician to be available through the night and day, and wants the quality of care that they are used to, but only want to pay him $8, per head per month.
I don't know how to practice cheap medicine. I try to give each patient what I think is needed. When I have to call a phone number to get a referral or a prescription filled, my office staff or I have to listen to the computer first, then I may be required to create a fax, never knowing if I will be successful for the patient or not. I am not paid for this time, or for the letter writing nor any other effort on behalf of the patient.
Still there are patients who feel that physicians should make the insurance carrier fulfill all their needs and take good care of them and their families, but should not make enough money to take care of their employees or themselves. The public has gotten what it asked for, bringing physicians to their collective knees. Now the question is, who won?
Ernest M. Thomas Jr., M.D.
Los Gatos
Christmas trees are 'good marketing'
I couldn't resist weighing in on the growing Christmas lighting debate, since my most popular short story, "An Agnostic Christmas," is almost a precise copy of the letters between Rachel Dombro (Jan. 24) and Lessley Anderson (Dec. 20). In the story, an agnostic man finally silences a religious neighbor who's been lobbying him to decorate his house by putting up a collection of decidedly secular adornments: neon beer signs, billboards for after-shave, a rocket ship drawn by pink flamingos--that sort of thing.
But I would take the argument even further: the impulse for putting up lights in the darkest time of the year is an instinctual one, and need not have anything whatsoever to do with Christianity, or any other religion. In fact, it's well-known that Christians glommed onto these rituals, just as they have taken over dozens of other pagan rituals (Easter eggs, Christmas trees) in an effort to win over converts. Good marketing, after all, is essential to a strong religious movement.
In my Willow Glen house, this devout agnostic loves putting up Christmas lights, while my nonreligious Jewish landlady enjoys practicing the nightly candle lightings of Hanukkah. Does this mean that we enjoy Lessley Anderson's sense of 'belonging' through decorating? We couldn't care less. And for those who would try to force this kind of false neighborhood unity on others, another rather universal doctrine comes quickly to mind: 'live and let live.'
Michael J. Vaughn
El Rio Drive
|
|
|
|
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
