Letter to the Editor 6-23-16

Poison into medicine
EDITOR: It’s once again more than ironic that tonight when I had to get something at CVS there were only two employees working in the whole store. It was prime time right after folks got off work. How incompetent and greedy can this multi-national corporation be to over-work and only hire these two employees? And, they’re going to manage a huge new CVS in downtown Sebastopol at the most major intersection in West County. How did we, such a progressive community, let this happen? I wouldn’t be surprised if the drive-thru was probably just a ploy, a distraction and a point of negotiation, a bone that was thrown at us, we bit, begged, chewed, swallowed and digested.
I get seriously ill every time I try to get through that intersection and see the huge, huge corner properties bulldozed and I can’t help fantasizing about having a  state of the art senior housing development totally accessible and with walking access to every thing in downtown; at such a strategic corner we could have been pioneers, like our pious forerunning senior center that promotes LGBTQ dances, one of the first in the country.
OK, and in that same vein, everyone should see “Where Should We Invade Next.” Don’t let the title turn you off or away. It’s of course polar opposite to what you would think, it’s about invading not for warfare but for peaceful empowering reasons, causes and effects and survival.
It exposes the solutions through self and collective empowerment. As our very own brilliant Rosemary Gladstar has declared, “It’s time to take back our bodies instead of being lazy and turning them over to pharmaceuticals.”
Michael Moore shows us in his epic film where and how other countries are doing just that — taking back their bodies, minds, souls, rights, humanity and properties.
Here is the recipe of where the gourmet meals are being served and are extremely successful. In fact, they were our very own recipes and medicine to begin with. It’s a must see, a “critical masterpiece.”
A Buddhist concept that certainly applies here, let’s turn our current poison into medicine.
Adriane Hatkoff
Sebastopol
Permitted?
EDITOR: We took a picnic to Wholer Bridge Park and found it locked with three or four commercial tour vehicles parked neatly in the shade. Having paid for a Sonoma Park pass we called the park and learned that Sonoma taxpayers are not allowed to use the property in summer. No reason given. In a county that posts “No Parking” signs at every river access not yet a park, this seems a little odd. Why did they refurbish the park if we are not permitted to use it in summer?
David Heventhal
Windsor
Gun violence after Orlando
EDITOR: In last week’s horrific Orlando, Florida attack, ISIS-inspired terrorist Omar Mateen used an assault weapon to slaughter most of his 49 innocent victims. The massacre reignites a needed national debate about assault weapons. Recently In France the father of a young man killed in the similarly planned Parisian nightclub slaughter filed a lawsuit aimed at Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
If any changes are ever made here, it’s doubtful the U.S. Congress will make them. Our most heroic president, George Washington warned us about partisan politics; yet the nation seems incapable of learning.  In a case in Wisconsin the families of two slain police officers won a $6 million settlement. This week the Sandy Hook families have filed a suit in Connecticut based on a novel legal theory, “negative entrustment.”
If a gun maker, in this case Remington, manufactures and sells to the public a military grade assault rifle, not only Remington but also the gun dealer or shop owner that dispenses such a gun to a potential mass murderer would be liable for damages.
F. H. Baumgardner
Santa Rosa