Publication Date: Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Letters
Letters
(August 17, 2005)
The ashes of dignity
Editor,
Hello to the team that will be setting up the DayOne shop in Palo Alto.
I genuinely hope that the move to the Cookbook Restaurant site does not haunt you with relentless problems associated with the carelessness with which the Town & Country ownership/management provided you your new location.
Your location housed a rather ordinary restaurant for many years -- a restaurant that had closed in the early '80s, at which time James Kim resurrected it from the fires of bankruptcy. Over time, Mr. Kim and his loyal crew served the community with consistency and dignity.
Last Sunday while having my last breakfast at the Cookbook, one customer stood up and asked all patrons to rise and give James and his crew a well-deserved standing ovation. Instantly, everyone stood and the roar of the applause was explosive. James stood with quiet humility before his admiring audience.
On so many Sundays my friend Morris and I would break bread at the Cookbook and discuss current events. We would wax poetic on the lack of civility in the 21st century, the growing separation between the haves and the have nots and how the fabric of our community is altered by capricious landlords.
Little did we realize that our friend James was going to experience the reality of our musings.
I wonder how the other business owners in the Town & Country Village, those who work long and hard to pay mortgages, school children and add community to the Town & Country Village feel when someone with the earnestness of James can be conveniently expunged from his own community?
In the event that the Cookbook gets a new lease, I wish you success in locating a suitable location either in the Town & Country Village or another suitable site. If you actually do move in to the Cookbook site, I hope the anger that some of the community feels toward the shopping center owners does not ruin your efforts to build a successful business atop the ashes of the very successful business that preceded you.
And lastly, I hope you never pay your rent late -- James never did.
Steven Rasmussen, The Milk Pail Market
California Street
Mountain View
Measure A remorse
Editor,
I've been stewing ever since I read the letters about "opting out" by seniors who also voted yes on Measure A, and the $5 million "windfall" in property taxes.
I've been a homeowner in Palo Alto since 1986. My husband passed away six years ago and my 19-year-old daughter and I are trying to hang on here because we love this area, our neighborhood, our friends, and the special education that my daughter has gotten over the years has been exceptional.
Due to the tech-bubble burst, 9/11 and outsourcing, my freelance graphic work fell to practically zero, so I had to get a "real" job with benefits. The job is okay but the company cut raises, contributions to pensions plans and we had to take days off without pay.
I did not vote for Measure A because I thought the increase was too high. It wasn't that I didn't want to contribute money to the school budgets. I have been used to paying $263 for the past years. I was relieved when it did not pass. I was dismayed when it was put up for a revote.
What is this? You don't like the way the vote came out so you are going to call a new vote? Could the Democrats have called for a revote because Kerry didn't win? A vote is a vote. If the amount had been kept the same or raised maybe $50 I wouldn't have minded, but almost doubling was not for me.
Seniors being able to opt out yet vote yes was not totally unfair. I think if they were going to opt out they should not have been allowed to vote.
I keep paying tax increases yet my income is not enough to offset these amounts. Guess it's time to think about moving. Then the city can double or perhaps triple the taxes they are currently getting from my property taxes.
I say let's have a new vote and bring the increase way down and if you are going to opt out you don't get to vote.
Anne Thurston
Santa Catalina Street
Palo Alto
No auto zone
Editor,
Should the city build an auto row on the Baylands? Absolutely not.
The effects of that would be like "eine Faust aufs Auge," translated literally from German: "a fist in the eye."
I can't believe that our City Council could even consider this -- where and in which time warp have they been living? Have they maybe huddled with our administration which asserts there is no global warming, that we need to press the last bits of oil out of our earth so we can continue to buy and fuel the cars we find in an auto row, so there be more auto rows maybe?
Maybe even in the "prime location" -- the Baylands -- visible to all the thousands of cars that zoom by on 101 every day?
Placing greed before preserving and protecting one of the last breathing spaces we have seems to be the trend of the time, but it will come back to haunt those who do.
Andrea Gleason
East Meadow Drive
Palo Alto
20-year commitment?
Editor,
I'm all for putting auto dealers on the city-owned land on East Bayshore Road, but have one concern.
Before the city spends any more time on this idea I'd like to see binding contracts with the car dealers that say that if the city delivers the land that they are bound to move to it and stay for a designated time span, let's say 20 years.
Marc Fleischmann
Wellsbury Way
Palo Alto
Saudi concerns
Editor,
It appears that our Saudi co-dependency has become stronger than ever. Last Friday, Bush senior accompanied by Halliburton's benefactor, Vice President Dick Cheney, made another pilgrimage to Riyadh to assure the House of Saud that our unhealthy addiction for their oil remains unabated.
"The relationship has tremendously improved with the United States," gushed the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal. Forgotten is that most of the 9/11 perpetrators came from Saudi Arabia. Forgotten is most of the religious schools spewing a virulent form of Islam have been funded by Saudi money. Forgotten is the enormous repression of Saudi women who are virtual prisoners in the House of Saud's dysfunctional kingdom.
And yet, we embrace the Saudis as friends and our former ally, Saddam Hussein, as a monster. We declared war on Iraq and killed thousands of their people which our compliant media described as "shock and awe," ignoring the immorality of such an action.
Jagjit Singh
Louisa Court
Palo Alto
Slick energy bill
Editor,
Gas prices are up. Demand for oil is up. Americans are dying in Iraq and dependence on Persian Gulf oil is up.
Even the president agrees that climate change is a growing concern. Instead of addressing these problems head on, the energy bill just signed into law by the president displays an abject failure of leadership.
This bill reads like something out of the 1950s -- we now have the ability to be energy independent, but I guess the oil companies just can't have that. Our leaders have missed an important opportunity to declare energy independence -- with alternative fuels and not go nuclear.
I'd like to know what oil company executive wrote this garbage?
Donnasue Jacobi
Haight Street
Menlo Park
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