PUBLIC WORKS
Re: Ethan Epstein’s Stamped
for Failure:
I work in Santa Cruz as supervisor of the District Attorney’s
Sexual Assault Unit and as a homicide prosecutor. My colleagues
and I routinely work rather more than 40 hours per week, and get
called out in the middle of the night as needed.
The county supervisors just gave all of us assistant d.a.’s a ten
percent pay cut. On top of last year’s 7.5 percent cut.
In addition to furloughing us without pay they are refusing to
pay the 2.5 percent raise we negotiated as part of our contract
three years ago. But the 26 percent raise they gave themselves,
that’s largely intact.
Also, if we use our cell phones (which we are required to carry)
to tell our wives and partners that we will be stuck at a crime
scene, that will be 6 bucks per call. If we use personal phones
to call witness who won’t accept calls from blocked numbers (our
mandatory-carry county phones have blocked numbers) we will not
be reimbursed.
Nice to know where my money went.
— Andrew Isaac
UNPRETTY POISON
Re: Bill
Croke’s The Evil
Ivy:
I was born and raised in South Florida, about 15 miles north of
Miami to be exact. I never saw nor heard of poison ivy in our
area or a case of it until I moved to Jupiter, about 60 miles
north, in 2000. We moved to a semi-rural area with lots of open
space and natural flora as opposed to the post-card kind (palm
trees and St. Augustine grass) that all the transplants surround
themselves with in the sub-divisions. Then I got three or four
cases of it in rapid succession in my yard, the worst time like
in a horror flick where the victims of some dread virus,
biological agent run amok or space alien infection tears
themselves apart in a demented fury to find relief from the
hellish itch. I attribute this disparity to S. Florida’s unique
environment. Down by Miami is semi-tropical with more natural
tropical flora like palm trees, ficus trees and ferns. Almost
with each mile you drive north you can detect a change to where,
by the time you’re up by us, it’s all scrub pine, hardwood,
spanish moss and, apparently, poison ivy. Finally, I learned how
to identify and steer clear of it. One day, just after we’d moved
there, my wife started tilling a garden out of the sandy soil in
our backyard which is to say she was going to convert a patch of
bahia grass threaded with occasional weeds into a solid square of
dead vegetation. I saw her standing barelegged in a patch of
springtime-fresh poison ivy. I yelled at her to run for her life.
She looks at me, down at her feet and says, “Oh it doesn’t bother
me, I’ve been out here lots of times”. Sure enough, it didn’t
touch her.
We have six kids, three have her complexion, three have mine. She
is of Jewish heritage with Semitic features and lovely olive skin
that will tan under a fluorescent light. She never burns. I’m the
guy they send to the set if you call Central Casting and say,
“send me a middle-aged, German-Dutch type pinkish, freckled white
man.” I’ll burn under that same lamp. And sure enough, the three
kids with her skin don’t suffer ivy’s torments or react to other
noxious plants or irritants. The three with my skin, however, are
susceptible to all I suffer with a dose of shellfish allergy
thrown in for one of the girls. For Floridians this seems an
especially cruel curse. But I’ve always held there is a rough
justice in this life and so it’s true even in our clan’s
dermatological eccentricities. If there is a mosquito anywhere
within its operational range to my wife, even a lone holdout on
an early winter’s night, it will find her and administer it’s
special little dose.
— Mark Shepler
Jupiter, Florida
Poison ivy is a scourge for those of us highly allergic to it.
Living here in northern Maryland hard by the Mason-Dixon Line,
the noxious plant is hardy and ubiquitous. Though I stay out of
my woods that gobble up the land on the western edge of my rural
property, my eight long-haired dogs frolic in the brush and
trees, bringing it to my skin with glee when they rub against my
legs.
Why modern agriscience hasn’t developed an inexpensive defoliant
targeted to only kill poison ivy that property owners can use to
destroy the hungry crop is beyond me. Seems there’s a huge market
for it. Or is it too plebian to elicit much interest?
— Mar
NO RESPECT FOR THE LAW
Re: Aaron Goldstein’s Is
Arizona’s Immigration Law Being Put on ICE?:
Does anyone who is rational seriously believe that Barack Obama
didn’t perjure himself when he took the Oath of Office —
particularly, when he swore, hand on Lincoln’s Bible, that he
would “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States”?
Besides apparently detesting America and being hell-bent on
destroying it, the man who continues to talk about the rule of
law has no respect for the law.
— C. Kenna Amos Jr.
ABOMINATION
Re: Janice Shaw Crouse’s AAP
Gives FGM an AOK:
Maybe these devout Muslim men ought to have THEIR precious
equipment cut off as young lads. This is sick stuff and an
abomination.
— Gary
FILLED WITH PRIDE
Re: William Murchison’s Textbook
Texas:
As a proud American, as a proud retired member of the armed
forces of the United States of America, as a man who reveres the
founding documents of our nation and the principles of Liberty I
say GOD BLESS TEXAS! I wish I had been born a Texan. You folks
make my Southern American heart fill with pride.
— Bob
WHY?
Re: James Bowman’s
Getting to Know Miley Cyrus:
God gave all of us life…like it or not, He did. He has made the
rules by which we can obtain eternal life versus eternal
death…AND THEY ARE NOT DIFFICULT, BUT…THE CHOICE IS OURS,
EACH INDIVIDUAL.
Miley Cyrus might think she knows “who she is”, but only God does
for sure.
Knowing this, the answer to the question that all philosopher’s
ask, WHY AM I HERE?” is answered simply and truthfully.
We are here to give honor and glory to God…….no other reason!
If Miley Cyrus knows this then she knows who she is, if she
doesn’t, then she is sadly mistaken and at risk.
— Gene Hauber
Brick, New Jersey
Thank you so much for an excellent, excellent article concerning
our current plague of narcissism.
One note concerning fact: “Utopia” does not mean “nowhere.” It
means “Good Place” as in “Eu”—“Good” (Like, sadly, “Eugenics” or
some other such) and “Topia” — Place (as in topographic map).
The Nowhere you are looking for is Erewhon by Samuel
Butler, an 1873 novel of a place that on the surface sorta kinda
maybe looks like a utopia but turns out not to be so. “Erewhon”
is “Nowhere” spelled somewhat backwards according to the
uniqueness of Butler who was, shall we say, seriously unique.
If we take up Plato’s Utopia and follow it with Bulter’s
Erewhon, we can approximate a true vision of the
wretched mess that is the only possible attainment of a fallen
human race.
— Garet
PARTY OF WALL STREET
Re: Ben Stein’s
Orange Juice Unlimited:
Stein misses two important points regarding his analysis of the
financial crisis: first, while it is true that Wall Street ran
wild with “housing finance instruments,” none of it would have
been possible without government, via Fannie and Freddie, making
home ownership a de facto affirmative action program.
Second, it’s about time people like Stein reminded the American
public that, despite all mythology to the contrary, the
overwhelming majority of Wall Street campaign contributions over
the past three election cycles have gone to Democrats, not
Republicans. The so-called “party of Main Street” is anything
but.
— Arnold Ahlert
Boca Raton, Florida
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s
Bribe Charge: Issa Jobsgate Video Slams Sestak, Gibbs:
Your problem…err, that is — our problem, is right now we have
no “Eliot Ness” working this White House…gang.
It’s just that simple!
— RJ
