No bribes!
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Thank you for the millenium survival package that accompanied the release of your "Best of Seattle" issue (SW, 7/22). I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but I feel it would be inappropriate to accept your gifts.
Congratulations on a fine issue.
Kathy Best
Metropolitan editor
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sick joke
We, not the royal, but several women who read your most recent "Best of Seattle" issue (SW, 7/22), are appalled, sickened, and not feeling very forgiving about the "Best women-watching" segment.
Thanks for the quick and dirty objectification—of your mothers, sisters, daughters, and (thankfully, we are not included in this final and most horrifying category) wives and lovers.
We assume that humor was intended; and we love a good joke. But then let's take this joke even further, now that you have gotten us off to a good start. How about the best place to meet women in wheelchairs? Or the best place to meet pigeon-toed women, or the best place to meet blonde women with big boobs and no brains? This is, after all, what you are really implying. . . .
Insulted, and no longer reading the Weekly, we remain,
Objects #42378, 64721, and 83265
via email
Jesse and Strom live on
After having breezed through your "Best of Seattle" issue (SW, 7/22) with so much enjoyment, I hate to be a spoilsport, but someone unfortunately needs a reality check. Under #60, "Best reason to welcome the new millenium": "Jesse Helms just has to be gone by then."
I fled S.C. in 1956 to get away from the likes of Strom Thurmond (shame! shame!) and every year since have looked forward to his passing from the scene.
Sad to say, bottom scavengers like those two catfish live long and ugly lives. They thrive on shit.
Tom Smith
Seattle
Bummed out
My name is Ruth Ellen Rader and I am writing to you about "Bum's rush" by Eric Scigliano (Quick & Dirty, 7/22).
I am now living at the YWCA emergency shelter not far from the downtown library; I have returned here after a year and a half. The last time that I was in Seattle, I was on the streets, homeless. I slept on a mat on the floor at night and tinkered with the computers at the library quite a bit during the day.
I eventually left Seattle and migrated to Florida. Now I am back and this time am going to get a job and settle down here for good. I traveled across this country extensively, from Maine to Minnesota, Missouri to Montana, Texas to Tuscon, Portland to Pennsylvania. And during that time, I visited many libraries, in big cities and small towns, and I've seen how other communities have handled the situation.
It sounds to me like the library system and the City are playing pass-the-buck with the issue. Nobody wants to take the responsibility for resolving the controversy.
Well, I hope I don't get caught in the crossfire. Because with my "situationally" homeless status right now, I run the risk of falling under the ax that might be used to cut off an "undesirable" segment of the population. I'll bet that if you met me, you probably wouldn't want to exclude me; but then, if you saw me, you probably wouldn't even guess that I am homeless . . . so to speak, anyway.
Ruth Ellen Rader
Seattle
Sparks will fly
I disagree with Geov Parrish's assessment of the Seattle City Council race (Impolitics, "Democracy's dullards," 7/22). This year's council race gives Seattle voters the chance to build a progressive majority. Such a majority would fight against the current council majority's corporate give-away habits.
Parrish underestimates the strength of Judy Nicastro's exciting upstart campaign and completely ignores the grassroots organization of Curt Firestone. Nicastro has shown courage and leadership on the affordable housing issue and has built a strong network of support. Firestone is challenging Margaret Pageler—a strong ally of City Attorney Mark Sidran. He has spoken out against the Pageler-Sidran agenda (poster ban, sidewalk sitting, parks exclusion) in no uncertain terms. Both have scored the King Council Labor Council endorsement, in spite of well-known opponents.
I would invite Geov Parrish to watch these candidates in action and see some sparks fly.
John Tirpak
Seattle
Animals and AIDS
I would like to clarify a misconception attributed to me by Mr. Scott Van Valkenburg in a letter to the Seattle Weekly on July 8, 1999. While it is true that the human immune system is unique, it is also true that an HIV vaccine cannot be developed without animal testing. Developing an HIV vaccine has proven to be a difficult task. The virus's effects on the immune system are complex and our knowledge of how we can prevent its acquisition miniscule. We will not "know" all about the virus's ways of getting into the body for many, many years (if ever). But, like polio, measles, and more recently rotavirus, we can use empiricism to develop logical candidate vaccines. There is an overwhelming abundance of scientific evidence that animal models greatly speed the discovery of cures for any number of conditions and diseases that take the lives of both humans and animals. Animal models are not always perfect—and that really was my point in the statement attributed to me by Mr. Van Valkenburg.
