Letters to the Editor

What You Say

[Slant, "The First Stoned," Chris Goldstein, Oct. 11, 2007] noted that the [marijuana] plant has anti-cancer properties, among other health benefits. That is timely information — just one thing we will not hear from the supposedly concerned pharmaceutical industry and other promoters of October's Breast Cancer Awareness festivities. We will also not be informed of any pharmaceutical firm's past or present pesticide manufacturing businesses although, or because, many breast cancers may have resulted from that. Further, the pharmaceutical/pesticide cartel — along with colleagues in oil, paper/pulp, synthetic materials and plastics — virtually swims in chlorine chemicals, essentially the only source of notoriously cancer-causing dioxins. Hemp, marijuana's non-psychoactive cousin, unlike industrial competitors, needs no chlorine in growing or in manufacture of paper, plastics, fabrics or building materials. A big bonus: It leaves no toxins or carcinogens in the trash stream.

Bottom line is that the cannabis plant, both marijuana and hemp forms, would not only compete too well with many toxic and environmentally damaging industries, its good example would serve as a loud and clear indictment of them all.

John Jonik
Lower Kensington

A good portion of what defines any city is the energy on the street. The energy can be good. Or it can be bad. For some reason, Philadelphia seems committed to removing the good energy, like street musicians or street artists on First Friday and leaving what's left to crime and panhandlers [News, "Banned Art," Tom Namako, Oct. 18, 2007]. Just another example of a city that can't get the easy stuff right.

John LaVoy
West Philadelphia

[News, "Bell Curve," Oct. 18, 2007] listed the return of John Bolaris to Philadelphia at Fox 29 as a minus 2. It should be at least minus 25. I stopped watching the channel he reported for when he was here the first time because he is so obnoxious.The only person even approaching him in stupidity is Regis.

Albert Bary
West Philadelphia

After reading [Slant, "A Question of Mercy," Michael Washburn, Oct. 23, 2007], I wonder the usual — is Michael Washburn a Republican local journalist? The concept of severe penalty for first offense is joined in hand with [the concept that] we all must be closet felons. These are people's lives also, whether Washburn and others like him, enjoy that concept or not;lives that failed early intervention, not a shop/drop opportunity for the bloodthirsty Criminal Justice fan clubset to prey upon while they avoid catching drug dealers who waltz along our public streets with two-year cellular contracts and fine wardrobes, supplying the newly graduated or still-attending-university set.

We are ruining lives with this kind of Bush-administration-styled paranoia. It is Orwellian,Joe McCarthy-like, and we all know it.Conversely, there are no cameras in North Philadelphia or near the K&Ahot spots sufficient to accomplish the tasks needed, but they are all over the never-graffitied office buildings in Center City.

There really is something wrong with our system that we don't want to admit, no matter what era.The number of criminals caught through this J. Edgar Hoover styledbrush beatingis a tactic designed to create mental illness and criminal behavior becauseothers are similarlysick of the self-justified style of these malingering disinterested-yet-narcissisticmiscreants.

Please recover, Michael Washburn, [and] stop feeding the fire. Don't keep trying to beef up the prison population like cheese sandwiches and $1-a-day pay are the way to soul- or lifestyle-redemption; rather, [they're] a means to a hatred-filled life of people already kicked in the pants early.

Robin A. Albright, MS
Center City

1, 2, 3, 4, Patty-Pat Declares Port Richmond War

I waited to write you this e-mail. I was going to fire off a bitchfest to you yesterday but I did not want my emotions to affect my decisions and wording [Editor's Letter, "Snapshots," Duane Swierczynski, Oct 18, 2007]. But I cannot hold back. The only way I can describe the photo you ran of Port Richmond is this: You reached into our clothes hamper and picked the pair of underwear that we crapped. Forget about the other six pairs that maybe only had track marks. You published the shittiest pair.

With that being said, that photo is not what Port Richmond's about. You would not run a photo of the homeless guy who sleeps on the grate at 18th and Walnut and showcase Rittenhouse Square like that. It was a cock shot — you punched us below the belt.

The Port Richmond that I live in, and that I work so hard to keep our quality of life above the water, is a neighborhood where we still sit out on our stoops, we sweep our pavements, our rec centers are full of soccer and basketball games, we wait in line for our Stock's poundcake, Czerw's kielbasa and bitch and complain when the yuppies take up all the seats at the Mercer Cafe for the Mascarpone French Toast. That abandoned car and fridge out on the curb with the Christmas decorations not taken down was funny. I laughed but it embarrassed me — that is not my Port Richmond.

I am giving you my Catholic schoolgirl promise that I hold no ill will against you; I just want you to come into Port Richmond and see what you overlooked. It's not Norman Rockwell, but it's not that photograph you published. My treat for Aldo's cannoli or the Hinge's chicken parm soup. We'll go to Campbell Square and you'll see the Virgin Mary shrine — where someone is always on their knees ... saying the rosary. Our bar jukeboxes' most popular played songs are still Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and I know all my neighbors on my block. In your quest to be cutting-edge and funny, you really kicked a good neighborhood in the stomach.

XOXO

Patty-Pat Kozlowski
Port Richmond

The Friendly Skies

Contrary to the airline deregulation nightmare that Bruce Schimmel suggests we're suffering from, the facts paint to a quite different picture [Loose Canon, "A Bright Light in Dark Skies," Oct. 18, 2007]. Since 1978, when the government stopped regulating who could fly where and when and for how much — not to mention the price of every drink — air transportation has improved by almost any standard. Fares have fallen, after inflation, by almost 40 percent; tens of millions more people are flying; and more cities have more service. Employment in the industry is up; death in the air is down.

But, I really don't think that facts matter to someone like Schimmel, who sees in America an "ignorant," "warmongering," "xenophobic," "terror-celebrating" monstrosity that is rightly "despised" by the rest of the world.

I'm not asking your paper change its "progressive" politics, simply that you attempt to employ just a bit of balance, proportion and context to your often gratuitous criticism of our nation.

Adam Levick
West Philadelphia