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Photo captures much
that’s missing in society
In all the years that I’ve read your newspaper, the photo of Campolindo’s Logan Robeson consoling De La Salle’s Johnny Semany (Page C6, June 12) ranks among the very best I’ve ever seen. It captures compassion, caring and the heart of a competitor for an opponent, something we know is sorely lacking in every part of today’s life.
I was an Oakland Tribune carrier at age 10 in 1952, a subscriber to the Tribune through my parents before then, and a continuous reader of the Tribune and The Times into my current adult years, and never have I seen a photo that captures what our society needs to revive. I hope this photo gets an encore and another appearance on a more prominent page.
Gary Fong
San Ramon
Clearing trails doesn’t
need to be work
I feel as if I were born into the wrong species.
I have been doing habitat restoration — removing invasive, non-native plants from our parks in order to restore habitat for our native wildlife. These plants imported deliberately or by accident from foreign countries have no natural “enemies” here, nothing to keep them from spreading and thereby destroying our native habitat. Some examples are French broom, Italian thistle and poison hemlock (which is the plant that killed Socrates). When I work near a trail, I see dozens of people hiking by, but although many thank me for what I’m doing, not one of them offers to help, even though I remind them that habitat restoration is also exercise.
Apparently, people think that hiking is “fun,” but habitat restoration is “work,” and therefore not fun.
Mike Vandeman
San Ramon
Tests, licensing could
improve gun safety
A car being a lethal instrument and potential weapon with over 40,000 deaths per annum, driving it requires a license, a driver’s test and usually training for younger drivers, so how about requiring a similar procedure for guns given that guns have a similar annual death toll of about 45,000?
Also, given the “well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” Second Amendment, how about literally having a national defense militia in case we’re invaded or the feared armies of Donald Trump attempt another takeover. The requirements to qualify for the militia should include training. And taking the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory might be part of that to at least have some sense of the mental stability of those “packing.”
But somehow, we do need to protect individuals’ ability to defend themselves, especially in high-crime areas.
Jack Knutson
Fremont
Source: www.mercurynews.com