April 28, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

Letters

Editor,

My friend Daphne lives in Oxford, England. Pointing to the Canadian maples in full autumn attire, she said, "We must get rid of those foreign trees -- the English countryside was not meant to look like that."

Well, farewell all you Italian cypresses, London planes, elms, maples, ashes, redwoods, honey locusts, black locusts and firs of foreign ancestry. Still, Daphne did not kill trees.

Eucalypts are not invasive trees, they are invited trees. They provide roosting places for the Monarch butterflies as they migrate south. Selected by experienced landscape architects, the many species of Eucalyptus on the Stanford campus outnumber the species of oaks and pines.

Red-flowering (E. ficifolia), lemon-scented (E. citriodora), ribbon gum with non-shedding bark (E. viminalis) and the willow-leafed peppermint (E. nicholii), each has its niche. The bushy yate (E. lehmannii) that grows in salt marsh containing calcareous shell fragments, ignores salt spray and resists windthrow in exposed locations, grows to about 10 feet with foliage to the ground and screens the traveler to San Francisco airport from the unsightly bay mud and hazardous crosswinds.

Kill these nonnative trees and with what would you replace them?

Did you know that malaria was eliminated from Bakersfield in the 1870s by the planting of eucalypts, following the success with draining the Pontine Marshes near Rome? California State Senator Ellwood Cooper pushed for this.

Palo Alto's Tree Ordinance spells out the responsibilities of residents. Community assent is not granted to tree killers. Ron Bracewell Santa Fe Avenue Stanford
Farewell, Kate

Editor,

I have recently returned from a trip to China and learned of Kate Wakerley's passing (Weekly, April 9). I met Kate during the decade I spent at the Palo Alto Weekly, during which time the Mountain View Voice was acquired by Embarcadero Publishing Co. (the Weekly's parent company).

I also knew of her philanthropic work through the YWCA of the Mid-Peninsula. It is not lost on me that Kate's six-year struggle to survive cancer mirrored the timeline our Board endeavored to save the agency, and that the sale of the building was announced the week she died.

I think Kate would be pleased to know that the YWCA's mission of empowering women and eliminating racism will live on through a donor advised fund at The Women's Foundation, even as her legacy will be the love, humor and community-building efforts of her amazing family and her own philanthropic work in Mountain View and around the world. Debbie Ford-Scriba Marion Way Sunnyvale
Fiber facts?

Editor,

I attended the Midtown Residents Association meeting on April 22, at which Rick Ferguson of Community Center Neighborhood Association gave a presentation on the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) proposal.

I was concerned by several vague promises and misleading items, such as:

1) Pays for itself -- 15 years relying only on basic three services.

2) Exciting future service ideas? Yes -- at lower cost.

3) You trust it -- superior services at lower prices, more reliability, security and privacy from city utilities.

4) You own it.

5) TV/HDTV -- choose your own channels.

Much of this is marketing hype. Better, faster, cheaper are all great buzzwords, but where's the proof?

How do we know FTTH will pay for itself in 15 years or ever? Because the business plan says so? What are the exciting future services and how do we know they will cost less? How do we know service, reliability, etc., will be better and cheaper?

Unless the city is planning to distribute stock to residents, I don't think I'll "own it." The city would own the fiber services, as it does the utilities.

As for choosing our own TV channels, it's my impression that there will be a committee that determines what channels will be available. Who will be on that committee and what their tastes may be is a big unknown.

If we're going to have a reasoned debate on FTTH, let's at least start with the facts. Pat Marriott Dennis Drive Palo Alto
Maintain independence

Editor,

I am amazed that our City Council is considering spending as much as $40 million to provide fiber to the home. I worked for a company (Raychem) that tried that and lost more than $500 million and its independence over it.

This is a highly risky project and may well be outdated by the time it's built -- who knows, we may all be wireless by then. In the meantime, the council has been complaining for years that there is not enough money for storm-drain repair, library expansion and larger police facilities.

In some topics, the libraries have not added any books since 1970. Palo Alto has not built anything significant in 30 years. Compare with Mountain View, which in that period has built a new library, police and fire headquarters, city hall and performing arts center, all out of the general fund, despite per-capita income of less than half that of Palo Alto.

The fiber project adds no new capabilities except speed. A much better bet for the utilities would be a new power plant, given that electric rates are going up as much as 50 percent in the next few years.

Locally generated electricity is more efficient because of lower transmission losses. It would also provide a degree of independence and is a mature technology unlikely to be outdated. Andrew Tomlinson Guinda Street Palo Alto
ADM observations

Editor,

From personal observation, anti-depression medications (ADMs) are valuable in two situations: They can be used short-term to help prevent a severely depressed person from harming himself (physically, professionally, in relationships, etc.), and they can be used for somewhat longer so that a frequently or chronically depressed person has more available inner resources to work on the deeper causes of the depression.

In both cases, they are like aspirin -- they effectively alleviate symptoms so that the underlying problem can be addressed better. In my opinion, proponents are right in saying ADMs are effective and useful; opponents are right in saying that ADMs should not be the whole answer or a long-term solution. L. Peter Deutsch Santa Margarita Avenue Menlo Park
Prompt on posts problem

Editor,

I would like to express my pleasure with the City of Menlo Park and its responsiveness to its citizens.

On Friday, April 9, I e-mailed a random set of city senior staff with an issue my wife and I had with the storage of moveable soccer goal posts at a city park. Not knowing who the responsible party was, I figured one of them would redirect my concerns to the proper person, and in a week or so, if I was lucky, I might get an e-mail response saying they would "look into it."

Imagine my surprise and pleasure when, on the next business day, the issue was resolved completely and totally to our satisfaction.

So many thanks to the people or person who took action on our behalf. Kelly Blythe Willow Road Menlo Park
Earth urgency

Editor,

Earth Day seems particularly urgent this year.

Americans are being asked to Esau-like sell out their birthright (a free country with wonderful resources of nature, freedom and ideas) for a cold sterile vision focused on grim vigilance, endless war, depletion of irreplaceable petroleum and eventual collapse of our ecosystems under the stress of rigidly retaining our current unsustainable system.

I hope that we can open our vision to the possibility of a smarter set of solutions.

We are still great and strong and can with the right leadership find new ways to maintain our economy and sustain our environment without destroying the Earth that we need to provide us with a long-term future. Ed Taub Devoto Street Mountain View
Barrier theatrics

Editor,

Mountain View has its theater, Palo Alto has the City Council Players. A recent performance was reminiscent of a mix of Wagner and Gilbert & Sullivan, and went something like this.

The Nibelung-like denizens of Subtown-North had been manning their barricades to protect their pot of gold from an unholy alliance: A dark-side coalition of the Lords of Cardinal, the Dervishes of Development, and the Brahmins of Palo Valhalla, consulting their Daily and Weekly Oracles and abetted by a chorus of rabble-rousing, Hefeweiss-swigging Unblockaders.

Enter Brunehilde La Coris on her white horse -- an emissary from the land of Cardinal Management, bearing as gifts two shining spears of falsehood to keep the Valhalla foot soldiers in line. The amazing Morphing Jack-- one day Morton, next day Larry Horton -- kowtows and drives the push to take away the Subtowner's gold. To assist, Subtle Sillary sneaks in her not-so-subtle Grid of Plans, containing the Grand-No-Plan-At-All-Plan. The Ancient Lurch does a lurch.

The Subtowners and their leader, Daniel Sisyphus, sensing that their pot of gold is about to be stolen again are wailing and tearing their hair, but are kept in check by Official Protocol. Wait, here's Victor the Godzilla-fighter, descended from a long line of tribal leaders -- will his famous pea-shooter save the day? Sadly, no -- quoting the Oracles and buoyed by his ethical gifts from the Lords of Cardinal he breaks into his famous cryptic aria "Non Correo Piu" (I'm not running).

The barriers come crashing down. But in the darkening sky appear to be images of Palo Valhalla itself burning. Is this a harbinger for the second act? Will it turn out to be G&Sullivanesque -- with a solution and a happy ending -- or a Wagnerian tragedy? Send in your votes. Walter Sedriks Waverley Street Palo Alto

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