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Readers write

I am writing in response to the letter to the editor (“Why Spanish?” Sierra Sun) on Sept. 3.

I want to say I agree fully with everything the letter writer commented on regarding the Sierra Sun having a Spanish section. My mother moved to the United States when she was a little girl. My grandmother, along with six children, made the trip from Panama to North Hollywood. My grandmother was sponsored, showed the ability to have an income and learned English. In fact, all my uncles and aunts including my mother learned English. I am a first-generation born in this country and as a boy growing up, I was taught English only. No Spanish. I’d often wonder why my relatives all spoke Spanish at family get-togethers. But the minute they left the inside of the house, they spoke English.

In my opinion, when publications, pamphlets, labels and Town of Truckee newsletters are in Spanish as well as English I’m baffled. By not forcing others to speak our language of English, they are being held back and kept in a lower economic level. Possibly in the future Spanish will be the dominate language, but for at least a couple more generations, English is the language that most speak. The United States is known as a “melting pot.” That implies what ever you put in the pot joins together to become one final product.



It’s impossible for people to “melt” together when they speak different languages and maintain cultures above that of the United States. Our country is no longer a melting pot as when my mother came here.

Will this cause our country to fall apart someday? You bet! I’m just not sure what language I’ll be speaking when that happens.



I was very fortunate to be taught English, only, when growing up.

I am strongly against allowing the Truckee police to buy or rent or in anyway acquire the use of any more Tasers than the two they already have. If I had my wishes they would discard those two as well.

Please see Amnesty International’s comments on Tasers at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR511392004 and a story on NPR about excited delirium deaths from Tasers http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7622314

Tasers trigger excited delirium deaths when used on people with drugs or alcohol in their bloodstream. Way too many people have died when Tasered. I believe that they are a dangerous weapon that too frequently kill citizens in what are ordinary misdemeanor situations. In other words, way too much lethality for the crime.

At last someone has decided that political hacks and environmentalists with an agenda is not the group to decide the way that our local forest preservation laws should be decided. Someone out there thinks that the laws governing forest management and fire prevention should be made by people who are educated in forest management ” what a concept. But I doubt we will ever convince TRPA to let the people trained and educated on the subject ever get in control.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked Congress to allocate $190 billion for war next year and President Bush threatens to veto a five year $35 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Is war in a distant land more important than the children of American? Bush and Republicans seem to think so.

The insurance bill passed in the House 265-159. Who were the 151 “family values” Republicans that put party ideology ahead of 10 million American children?

George W. Bush and Republicans live in an upside-down world of fuzzy logic.


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