Sulphur Creek Nature Center in Hayward held an Unhaunted House Oct. 20 and 21, 2017, with the theme "Through the Looking Glass." There were visits with animals, a carnival, crafts, storytelling, a campfire, games, night hikes, face painting and treats. (Courtesy of Hayward Area Park and Recreation District)
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Let’s reinvest
in Hayward parks
What happened to Sulphur Creek, the beautiful little park with the animals; the “hidden gem” of Hayward? Or the Shoreline Interpretive Center? It seems they’re closed all the time now.
COVID forced closures of the wildlife hospital, animal lending library and Unhaunted House event. The minimal staff remaining at each park are stretched thin just in bringing the animals up to par with veterinary care.
Can we help? We can write the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District board requesting that experienced caretakers and naturalists be funded and prioritized. Without them, no healthy reopenings of either park can occur.
We can donate pet food store gift cards or use Sulphur Creek’s Amazon wish list.
We can spread the word that we want our district nature programs and their animals to survive, and bolster the extraordinary efforts of staff to restore the parks to health. Then once again, we can be welcomed in with open gates.
Anne-Marie Tucker
Hayward
It’s time that we
clean up California
Living in California is now like living in a garbage can. Twenty or so years ago California was considered a vacation destination from all over the globe. Now, traveling around the state one sees piles of debris covering the highways.
Added to the hopelessness of the homeless and drugs, filth in our once iconic cities has created a sickening and distressing picture. All the cries from the climate lobby have sounded alarms about climate change and plastic but chasing windmills misses the garbage surrounding us.
Let’s get serious about saving planet Earth, and get our heads out of the garbage can. Everyone needs to take responsibility and pride in where we live and keep our environment clean and tidy.
J.E. Huckestein
Brentwood
Caltrans drops ball
on filthy highways
I can’t drive anymore, so as a passenger I see the trash buildup. We had visitors from Delaware stay with us, so we picked them up at Oakland Airport to drive home to Dublin. They were appalled at the trash along Interstate 880. We babysit in Brentwood, and I see the trash build up on Vasco Road.
It seems like Caltrans has given up on keeping our roads tidy. I mean, come on, at least try once in awhile.
Gene Nokes
Dublin
Civil society comes
with responsibility
Re. “Nancy Pelosi says hammer attack on ‘our Pop’ has traumatized her grandchildren,” Oct. 29:
Sad news that Paul Pelosi, husband of our House Speaker, was attacked at home by a Bay Area man with political motivations.
This is sobering evidence of the acute need for better civic peace values education in schools, public discourse and public policy; including proper legal limits on “free speech.”
Congress long ago enacted limits on “speech” when it comes to false advertising in commerce. We now take these protective legal limits for granted.
So why do we remain almost religiously bound to the idea that officeholders and candidates can deliberately and repeatedly lie to the electorate, thereby defeating many voters’ intelligence?
The “free” fingers of the hand never fight! They remain literally “tied” by the ligaments to their responsibilities — to the very whole that nourishes their “individual freedoms.”
It is time for the Supreme Court and the population to learn that freedom, to be sustainable, must be responsible.
Peter Bruce DuMont
Berkeley
IRS unlikely to focus
on U.S. working class
Re. “IRS: Gap grows between taxes owed and paid,” Page C7, Oct. 29:
A great many people in this country are constantly urging us to enforce the existing laws. It is likely true that rigorous enforcement of existing gun laws would help reduce the crime rate. We’re told that cheating on welfare should be punished. And that continuing deficits in the federal budget will imperil our future and that of our children.
Yet when we try to beef up the budget of the Internal Revenue Service in order to enforce the existing laws, the same people want to roll back the increased budget so that “ordinary working-class Americans” will not be subject to auditing agents.
Treasury Secretary Yellen estimates that the “tax gap” is estimated to be $7 trillion in full over the next decade.
Do we really think that the target is working-class Americans? We should honor fairness in our system and stop allowing this travesty to continue.
Harry Fish
Moraga
Global private enterprise
can tackle climate
Re: “What are the solutions to climate change?” Oct. 31:
This article provides some optimism to our eventual transition from fossil fuels. We must also implement a full-scale, multipronged approach immediately to restore balance in our diverse ecosystems, currently in peril.
Leading the way to breakthrough solutions are innovators as noted in Project Drawdown. Private enterprise on a global scale must lead the innovation charge, with generous incentives from governments. Why don’t innovators coalesce into partnerships irrespective of patents and intellectual property rights, to invent and scale new technologies that would mitigate this existential threat? Fossil fuel wastes (greenhouse gases, pollutants, plastics) harm all of us worldwide for untold years. With global warming approaching 2 degrees Fahrenheit, this is definitely a time for “people over profits.” Let’s not forget how developed countries stockpiled vaccines for a time thus hindering the arrest of COVID.
We cannot abide that same protectionist strategy when we need worldwide collaboration to beat back climate change.
Barbara Jue
San Francisco