Saratoga News

Letters

Mayor should drop budget panel idea

During a recent City Council meeting, Mayor Don Wolfe posed the idea of creating a "Blue Ribbon Committee" to explore the possibilities of "enhancement" of city income. Councilmembers Paul Jacobs, Stan Bogosian and Gillian Moran and Vice-Mayor Jim Shaw stated that since the Finance Commission was in the process of formulating a five-year plan, Mayor Wolfe's proposal was premature, if not inappropriate.

Naturally, Mayor Wolfe, always mindful of his fellow councilmembers and their advice, subsequently announced that he personally would contact various community leaders directly in an effort to try and form his Blue Ribbon Committee anyway!

Apparently, Mayor Wolfe has forgotten that during the most recent City Council election, Saratogans considered him and his then current fellow councilmembers "arrogant." Mayor Wolfe continues to be arrogant and, worse yet, is unwilling to heed the advice of his peers on the council.

Why should we be forced to tolerate such behavior? We insist that Mayor Wolfe immediately cease pursuing his Blue Ribbon Committee project. We further insist that he publicly apologize to his fellow City Council members. Don Wolfe is not mayor because the voters of Saratoga elected him; he is mayor only because his fellow councilmembers granted him that title. His way of thanking them is to treat some of them with contempt.

Marcia Fariss
Saratoga

Hats off to all the working mothers!

Is Audrey Thompson ("Just who are the dangerous ones?" Speak Out!, July 22) truly uninformed, I wonder, or simply so insensitive that she--while probably financially secure--can place herself on such a morally superior pedestal above the "selfish" mothers who work outside the home?

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I will explain that the majority of women who work outside the home are obliged to--even when they have working husbands--in order to help (or totally) pay the rent or mortgage in these days of exorbitant housing costs, and to feed, clothe and educate their children--not to buy luxuries or enjoy themselves.

My children are now adults and I am no longer faced with that necessity, but I am sufficiently acquainted with younger mothers who are as to understand and sympathize with them, not condemn them. There are a few who continue in worthwhile, interesting careers, but most are employed in "bread-and-butter" jobs and would gladly give up spending long, stressful hours of juggling their double responsibilities if they could.

And let us not blame them all for bearing children when not fully prepared. Some are willing to manage somehow because of the natural urge for motherhood, but many conceptions are due to contraceptive failure, ignorance and male aggression (and there are many who would deny them the choice of terminating an unplanned pregnancy).

Moreover, even when a child is planned under favorable circumstances, mothers often have to adjust to devastating changes in circumstances, such as desertion and disability or the sudden unemployment of their partners.

As for holding up Susannah Wesley as a paragon of motherly virtue, we are not told whether she had spousal financial support and domestic help--as I suspect was the case. But I find it difficult to believe that any woman can provide really adequate amounts of love and attention for 18 children even within such a framework.

Furthermore, mothers who are away for much of the day are quite capable of giving their children lots of loving care during the time they are able to spend with them. And although discipline is needed as well, of course, it has been my observation that it is children who are subjected to the harsh measures advocated in the Bible (in addition to those who suffer actual physical abuse by parents unable to to cope with unwanted offspring) who are the most likely to react later with anger and violence.

I say, "Hats off to the working mother!"

Joan Adams
Saratoga

Eucalyptus trees put everything in focus

When I hear about the strong possibility that the eucalyptus trees at Saratoga Elementary School will be felled, I couldn't help but remember "The Giving Tree." While we might not have directly benefited from the trees like the character in the popular children's book in elementary school, we were in awe of their majesty, used their giant trunks while playing hide 'n' seek, leaned against them while watching basketball and softball and ate lunch on their protruding roots. Those trees are a part of the school as much as the grassy field, the handball wall and the tether ball poles. What is not used in a direct fashion is made up in the infinite ways the students take advantage of the trees' presence.

I understand the trees could be chopped down because they have been deemed unsafe. I haven't visited my alma mater too often in the past 18 years, but I did manage to play a little four square with my brother, sister and few friends just three months ago ( I know four-square for the 30-and-over crowd may seem ludicrous and juvenile, but we had so much fun we went back the next day and added handball to the repertoire). The trees looked healthy then, which tells me that any unsafe conditions are probably with the limbs and branches. If that is the case, perhaps the dangers could be overcome with proper pruning and maintenance.

To a child, and even adults, one look at those trees and everything falls into perspective. Chop them down and a few other things about the human race will be put into perspective. Thinking back to "The Giving Tree," I recall the elderly gentleman finding simple pleasure in the fact that he was able to utilize the leftover stump as a place to sit. Saratoga Elementary students, as we all, have too much of a passion for life to contemplate our existence on the scars of once was.

Brian H Bose
Saratoga Elementary School Class of 1981

Saratogans have the wrong idea about S.J.

Regarding the DeCinzo cartoon in the July 1 issue of the Saratoga News, was the cartoonist advocating the building of a fence around Saratoga to maintain the purity and protect the innocence of the resident youth? If so, why didn't he just say so?

However, history has shown that it did not work to ebb the flow of evil into ancient China, or 1930s France, or even to muffle the noise from Highway 85. Therefore, I doubt it will be effective here.

I considered an alternative response that probably would have been just what you would have expected. My baggy pants, gang-banger San Jo kid ripped off your coddled Saratoga wimp's arm and beat him with it. That's the sticker I display on the rear bumper of my lowered '62 Chevy.

Dennis Boylan
San Jose

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