Beginning this week in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, Andrea Dorey will begin writing a monthly column about issues affecting older adults.

Dorey, 65, brings to the task more than 20 years of experience as a medical writer for such companies as Syntex Research and Matrix Pharmaceutical Inc.

She has a degree in creative writing with an emphasis in technical writing from San José State University and two lifetime teaching credentials. She is a licensed vocational nurse.

She has taught a number of adult education classes in nonfiction and fiction writing as well as writing television and film scripts.

She honed her special interest in senior issues through her involvement with AARP, serving for two years as a chapter president. Her column will appear in the first issue of every month.

Why stop at pricing limits for housing?

Regarding the Los Gatos Town Council vote to limit the rent of second homes to 80 percent of fair rental value to provide affordable housing: Los Gatos also needs affordable food, so let's limit grocery store prices to 80 percent of value. And how about new car sales? Let's limit them to 80 percent of value. In fact, why should anyone in Los Gatos pay full price for anything? Let's make it affordable. Forget about the Constitution and the Bible—the Los Gatos Town Council knows what is best for the people.

—Lowell Grattan, Los Gatos


Town planners should approve Villa home

On May 28 I attended the planning commission meeting, along with nine other residents, to speak in favor of a new home proposed at 184 Villa Ave. The planning commission chose to call three houses a neighborhood, as opposed to acknowledging the fact that Villa is the most eclectic street in Los Gatos, consisting of an office building parking lot, a four-unit townhouse development, a duplex, a fourplex, a three-story apartment building, a seven-unit apartment complex, a church parking lot, a new hotel and seven single-family homes. In addition, Villa has become a private parking lot for employees of the town.

The Villa street has been a blight on the town of Los Gatos for years and those of us living close by want to see it improved now. The house proposed on May 28 was within the floor-to-area ratios, was of excellent design and had the support of the entire neighborhood but was rejected by the planning commission. In my opinion, the planning commission was making a very dramatic effort to convince those of us in attendance that they were doing their job. I only ask: for whom?

—Marlene Rodman, Los Gatos

Clarification

Information in the story about leukemia victim Eric Drew on June 11 was incorrect. According to Susan Ipaktchian of the Stanford University Medical Center, "chemotherapy treatments may be injected into the bloodstream through a line or a port that leads to a central vein, but they are not injected directly into the heart or spinal cord. Additionally, chemotherapy agents do not cause veins to collapse on contact, although some of the agents may cause irritation to peripheral veins, like those in the arm, and are therefore not administered through those veins."