We at the Madera Islamic Center would like to thank you for the articles you have been running about Muslims in general and the mosque at Ground Zero. These articles may serve as enlightening information to people in Madera. This week, someone left a sign in front of the Center that read, “No temple for the terrorists on Ground Zero.”
Whoever left that sign committed a terrorist act themselves. He or she should have the courtesy to come in person and state their opinion and perhaps we could have a discussion of the pros and cons.
Most of our community think the plan for a mosque at Ground Zero should be changed to another location since it is becoming a huge issue and many Americans do not want it there. It is too bad that the politicians have gotten involved, especially since we are coming up on an election.
Hopefully, they will move on to other things and not create a great division on the subject.
We are proud of our city of Madera and thank you again for your good work.
I stayed at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. a few times in past decades attending conferences — always on the boss’s nickel. I was sad to learn in 2006 that it was being torn down. Now, I am absolutely buffaloed to find out a new school has been built where the hotel once was — the most expensively built school in America.
It cost $578 million, and will house 4,200 students, from kindergarten through grade 12.
If I were a voter in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I would never, never, never vote for another school bond issue. These bozos running the L.A. schools have shown once again they have no shame. A few years ago, you may remember, that same group of head-scratchers built the $238 million Belmont Learning Center, and then had to spend another $100 million tearing it down. Turns out somebody discovered the land on which it was built was a toxic site.
The original budget for construction of the nation’s most expensive public school was a mere $270 million. The school bosses managed to more than double that.
The Los Angelinos ought to come to Madera and learn a thing or two. Here, the district brought their new schools in on time and on budget — and they are nice schools.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Unified School District, like many others, is having to lay off thousands of teachers, so one wonders who will teach the students once this new school opens its doors.
Despite being an outrageous travesty, this school has soaked up money that can’t be spent on other needed Los Angeles Schools. So, here is what will happen: Before long, the district will go begging the voters for more money for more schools.
No doubt this school — which has been named the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools — is a beautiful building. According to The Associated Press, it includes fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex’s namesake. Kennedy, we remember, was assassinated at the Ambassador in 1968.
Meanwhile, the dropout rate in the Los Angeles district is 50 percent.
How do the people of Los Angeles put up with this?
Mrs. Doud and I both think autumn is almost here, even though by the calendar fall is still a month away. The way we know is that the cat is starting to fluff out and put on her winter coat.
It’s a little like when you go to the big city, and while walking around the stores you notice the better-dressed women are consulting salespeople about fall fashions. Who better than clothes-buying city women to predict weather change? Well, there’s the cat.
The cat hasn’t been well dressed at all this summer. All she has done is shed. The garage, which doubles as her house, is carpeted wall to wall with cat hair. There’s barely room for the cars. I sometimes go out with a vacuum and clean it up a little, and for a day or two it looks pretty good. Then it carpets up again.
One day I went after the loose cat hair with a yard blower. About all that happened was that the cat hair on one side went over to the other side, and vice versa. It took about an hour for all the floating cat hair to settle down, and it took the rest of the day before the cat came back. When the blower started, she bolted about three blocks down the street. When she returned, she first peeked around the corner of the garage door to see whether that monster had left.
But she has stopped shedding, almost suddenly. Instead of looking mangy and decrepit, she now is sleek, combed and clean, almost like one of those cats in cat-food commercials.
By the way, have you noticed how those cat-food-commercial cats always look sleek and thin? It’s no wonder you see them dive into a bowl of cat food when they get the cue. I think they’re starved. And then they have cat barbers trim them up.
When I see those cats eating, I think to myself that if I fed our cat some of that cat food she might stop looking like a duffle bag with four little legs. But that never works. She just chunks up more. Pretty soon, we’ll have to start moving her around with a forklift.
It is disturbing to read that the front in the Mexican drug war has moved to Monterrey, one of Mexico’s most beautiful and most prosperous cities. The people of Monterrey are well-educated and productive, and the city is well planned and well-governed. Or, at least it was.
Now, local business leaders are putting full-page ads in newspapers, pleading with President Felipe Calderon to send troops to defend the city against drug violence.
The Associated Press reports that the mayor of Santiago, a suburb of Monterrey, was kidnapped and murdered by drug thugs disguised as police. The AP says Santiago has been a favorite getaway for residents of Monterrey, but that is no longer the case.
The Wall Street Journal reports that drug gangs are regularly using tractor-trailer trucks to block arterials in Monterrey, making it harder for police and fire trucks to respond to calls for help. A grenade was thrown at a television station.
If President Calderon reads the ad from the burghers of Monterrey, there will be little he can do to respond. Mexico’s armed forces already are stretched beyond their breaking points.
And the drug gangs keep expanding their wars against one another and the country’s public safety establishment, fueled by a constant flow of drug money, much of it from the United States.
Those same drug gangs are drifting north. We’re already dealing with their outliers here in Madera County. The 45,000-plant marijuana grow discovered this week north of Madera was just one example of Mexican drug gangs at work here. Had that marijuana been sold, much of the millions of dollars it would have fetched likely would have ended up in Mexican drug lords’ hands, either as cash or guns.
The United States pretends it isn’t in this war, but it is. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just sent 250 National Guard troops to help protect the border. Before long, we will need 100 times that many.
All comments are edited for length and content. Because of content or space limitations, some comments may not be published. More than one comment from the same person during the same week will normally not be published. Please limit calls to two minutes or less.
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A woman (name given) called to ask “if you could come out tomorrow to St. Joachim Church. We’re having our kids’ second day camp and wondered if you could do a report on that.” The same lady called the next day to ask the same question and “wanted to know if a reporter could come out and take pictures.”
Another woman said, “On Monday I took my son over to St. Joachim Church for day camp. It was very nice. My only complaint was the people doing the registration didn’t speak any English. None of them. Everyone was speaking in Spanish. We need to understand that English is the language here. I don’t know if I’ll take my son next year unless they have English-speaking people.” (Editor’s note: The Tribune’s photographer, who speaks no Spanish, had no difficulty speaking in English with those she saw at the day camp, both leaders and participants, when she took photographs there.)
“A letter (to the editor) in Wednesday’s (Aug. 11) paper was titled Tribune should watch your mistakes,” said a man. “Well, you didn’t that day. The poor relatives who read their loved ones’ obituaries that morning must have been really disappointed when the names came out with letters missing. You couldn’t even understand the name of the person who had passed.”
“I was really disappointed in the photos used in the concert article,” said a lady. “They were taken by Ramona Frances, who came late to this event, while Leon Emo was there well before 5 p.m. He took several pictures of Susan and Andrea Venturi, Chuck DaFina, the crowd and the barbecue that would have been far more fitting to honor the tribute to Mr. Jerry Venturi.”
A woman said, “I’d like to apply for a job as a proofreader because you obviously need one. Saturday (Aug. 14), the front page has three different pictures with the same caption under the same one. I’m ready to start today. Come on guys.”
A lady suggested, “Let’s have a contest among readers. And, at the end of the week, give a prize to the one that found the most errors in the Tribune.”
A woman “suggested if you have complaints or issues with the Brown Bag program or the commodity program, please direct them to the Madera Community Food Bank in writing. Your phone calls will fall on deaf ears. The Pan-Am Center is a distribution site of these programs only. They do not manage them. I, for one, find it unacceptable that the seniors in our community are shown such lack of compassion and consideration. It’s called communication, people, and the Tribune will post it free.”
A lady called “in regards to Memorial Stadium where Madera High and Madera South play. It came to my understanding recently that people are using it as a playground and party area. They bring their children. They lift the covers on the long jump pits to play in the sand. They leave dirty diapers and leave debris on the field. They are ruining this field they just put in a few years ago.
“We’ve been wanting to install an extension to the fence to make it 12-feet high so people couldn’t help themselves over the fence. They are destroying the field.”
A woman responded to last week’s caller who “complained about the Indians taking the land they say belongs to them.” This caller said, “The whole cotton-picking Valley belong to them because the white man stole it away from them. Any part they can say is theirs.”
A man saw “another ad for the tire amnesty (program) in the paper. I’ve lived here five years and seen this ad many times. Living in Southern California (previously) I had never heard of tire amnesty. I guess you keep the tires off your old car and save the $2.50 recycling fee. Why would I want to keep four smelly tires around waiting for this amnesty? Maybe it’s geared toward the farming community. It just doesn’t make since. I just don’t get it. I’m confused.”
A woman called about our daily photo of “Madera County at work. I think you’ve missed a very important citizen of Madera County.” She gave the person’s name and said “she works for Dr. Mohammed Ahsraf. She’s worked there for at least 30 years. She’s been an asset to every patient that’s been there and the doctor.” She hoped the paper “would consider the person and feature her in Madera County at work.”
Thank you to Sam (Pistoresi),” said a woman. “He wrote the article (actually a letter to the editor) about the illegal aliens. Just keep it coming Sam. We all have to stand up for Arizona and do something about the illegals.”
Another caller had a similar comment. “I hope they suspend the welfare because they (illegal immigrants) are having babies, then collecting welfare and taking away from the people who really need it.”
Another lady said, “great letter in the Tribune from Katherine Atilano for her letter to the editor about her support of Proposition 8. She is correct. It is not God’s will to have same-sex couples united in marriage. I am so tired of this thing being pushed down our throats.”
“Unbelievable, only in America,” said a woman. “You have Mexicans that carry Mexican (Spanish rather) signs and speak no English protesting against a rock quarry. Cannot believe it. Out in front of the Government Center with a bunch of kids running into Fourth Street forcing cars to slam on their brakes. Only in America is the language English. You don’t protest unless it’s in English. You have no right because you’re probably not legal.”
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Thank you for your calls. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24 hours a day by calling 674-4478 or by visiting maderatribuneredline.com on the Internet.
When I was a kid in grade school, one threat under which my fellow students and I lived was “the permanent record.” If one committed an infraction of the rules, such as talking in class or shooting spitwads, the teacher who caught us would say, “This is going on your permanent record.”
None of us knew what the permanent record actually was. We assumed there was a big book somewhere in the school in which the teachers would write down our sins. We had been assured in Sunday school, after all, that God had just such a book for His own records, and that every time we were not good boys and girls, notes of our infringements on propriety were made in permanent ink. I still believe that, actually. Someone has to be keeping a record somewhere, or a lot of guilt will be going to waste. Anyway, it just made sense that such a record was kept at school, too.
And it may have been, but as far as I know, it never followed me around. And I’m glad of that.
But the young generation of today is facing a bigger challenge, because it is creating its own permanent records. It seems that all the junk people are either putting on their own social media pages, such as Facebook, or putting on the pages of others, is unlikely ever to be erased. A photo of yourself naked drinking beer from a large funnel, for example, will be there when you are looking for your first job, and if your prospective employer looks you up, your job chances could turn to toast.
However, salvation may be offered in the future, says Eric Schmidt, the chief executive officer of Google. He told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that future technology may provide an opportunity for anyone to change one’s name and become an entire new person, as far as the Internet is concerned.
That may not be as weird as it seems. In the virtual world, virtual people would be as likely a population as anyone else.
But the permanent record still would be there, and I wouldn’t be any more comfortable with that thought than I was in grade school.
The other day, I happened to be surfing channels, and landed upon one on which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was speaking. She was talking to a group about helping other countries, and it dawned on me that the Democrats may have gotten it wrong. Maybe, instead of choosing Barack Obama as their candidate, they should have chosen Hillary Clinton.
I say that because I watched President Obama make a speech on that day, too, and was left with no doubt about which of the two actually knew what she or he was talking about.
Clinton spoke at considerable length about the details of providing aid to others. Her command of detail was evident and her ability to express it superb.
And it turns out she was merely answering a question from a member of the group before which she was appearing. “Next question,” she said when she was through speaking.
Obama, meanwhile, spoke about the planned mosque near Ground Zero. He started out saying “Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” which is what he says a lot, and then proceeded to not make very much clear at all.
“Hope, change and yes we can” sounded great to many Democrats during the presidential campaign. And Oprah, after all, had spoken up for Obama, which made everything peachy with a good block of voters. Obama also was a tireless campaigner.
Hillary worked hard on the campaign trail, too, but she just couldn’t carry the day.
Which is too bad. It’s a safe bet, now that we have two years of watching the two work, that she is the smarter of the two, has more experience, knows how to put that experience to work and may even be more willing to take tough positions.
Obama did prove himself smarter on at least one thing, though. He was clever enough to hire Hillary Clinton, placing her where he could keep an eye on her.
The tragic story of the deaths of eight spectators and injuries of 10 others at an off-road truck race Saturday in the Mojave Desert is causing critics of the sport to call for more enforcement from the Bureau of Land Management. That’s because the race courses are on Bureau property.
But plenty of rules already exist for the sport and its spectators, and when it comes down to it, you can’t idiot-proof that kind of activity.
One rule, for example, is that spectators are supposed to stay 100 feet away from the racecourse. The people who were killed when one truck jumped over a rise, braked and slid into spectators were only a few feet from the racecourse — close enough for a driver’s error to kill them.
Fans of the sport know that can happen. And yet, many of them get vicarious thrills from standing in harm’s way — close enough for the heat from the engines to waft over them.
There are no guardrails in the desert. People are warned not to drink alcohol, but they do. People are even warned not to turn their backs on the track. But they do. They stand around in groups talking, adjacent to the track. They don’t have a clue.
The clear danger, the insufferable noise, the choking dust, and the smells of exhaust and hot metal, are what draw fans to the dusty and hilly desert in 110-degree heat.
It’s a sport in which relatively few become involved. It is for the hard-core driver and the hard-core fan. For them, safety measures amount to nuisances.
The people who put the races on are worried this horrific accident may lead to their not being able to race any more. You can’t blame them for being concerned about that, but it’s also clear their mourning period for the fans who were killed and injured has been short-lived. Perhaps that sport’s time has come and gone.
A dairy in Boardman, Ore., has been hiring political refugees to milk cows, and that has some critics upset. Why employ refugees, these critics ask, when there are plenty of jobless Oregonians who might want to work?
The human resources manager for the (gasp) 93,000-acre operation, Threemile Canyon Farms, replied to the critics that they should apply for the jobs themselves if they don’t want someone else to have them. None of the critics came around, nor did anybody from Portland, where unemployment is in the double digits.
These refugees, who are in the country legally, were brought to Oregon through the auspices of the International Rescue Committee, an Idaho-based group that helps people who have to flee their own countries because of political oppression.
Threemile Canyon Farms is a huge, integrated operation, that employs many, and jobs milking cows are good places to start a dairy career. These aren’t dead-end positions.
Boardman, while not a large city, is beautifully located in the Columbia River Valley, across the river from Washington State, and isn’t far from several towns of good size. One would think non-refugees would have lined up for good dairy jobs in a large operation that would have some benefits and would offer security.
But no. Political refugees from several countries had to be brought from another state. The Oregonians, apparently, just didn’t want to get their hands dirty.
Other jobs go begging, not only in agriculture, but in food processing and related enterprises. Plenty of city people are unemployed, but they aren’t eager to do country jobs.
Cow-milking is hard work that requires physical endurance, a certain amount of smarts, concentration and the ability to act quickly. But it pays well (on the larger dairies), is challenging, and most larger dairies are happy to promote milkers who prove their worth.
Oregon city dwellers’ lack of understanding may not be doing them any favors.
