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OF BATTLES AND BIASES
Wow! What a biased article ["NIMBY," WW, Feb. 18, 1998]. You didn't interview any of the neighborhood association officers and participants. You state generalities as if they stood for the whole: As in your lead: "Many of Portland's neighborhood associations...are now ruled by stick-in-the-mud cranks trying to keep their property values up...." So much for those who are working for positive change. So much for community building. You also interview a lot of the economic and social architects who are directly responsible for the confrontation now developing. Your article may weaken important neighborhood groups and will make matters worse. In your paean to Mayor Katz for her "finally...getting it" (we'll see) in the same issue ["The Education of Vera Katz," 500 Words], you state, "Achieving this agenda will take years of hard work, tremendous coordination with other governments, and enhanced citizen engagement." Lots of luck. Fifteen years of neighborhood experience tell me that communication is deteriorating faster than ever. With only the leadership ideas presented, the problem will never be resolved. What you seem to miss is that there is another side to this story and our leadership (including you in the press corps) are talking to the choir and dismissing the needs of the congregation. This battle--for battle it unfortunately is--is about growth and individual rights vs. sustainability and community. As David Suzuki wrote, "unlimited growth is the ethos of a cancer cell." We talk about containing growth (drawing our little urban growth boundary with our neat little pen lines), but we do not consider how much is enough. To the developers (and to the candidates who receive financing from them, and the newspapers who provide a window on a very narrow world), there is evidently never enough. For the citizen not seated in a spacious-view living room in the West Hills or a luxurious apartment, the world looks very different indeed. As for the Holocaust memorial--let them put it somewhere near the Vietnam memorial. If our own fallen soldiers don't rate the front of the park, no one does. And, please try to act like responsible democratic journalists and do as large a piece on the other side of the issue--speaking only to neighborhood activists this time, instead of to officials who may be only experiencing trouble cramming their decisions down the public's throat with impunity. John Legry, Southeast 67th Avenue Bob Young responds: Contrary to your claim, I did interview neighborhood association officers and activists. That's why Jean Hoops, Pat Messinger, Andy Eisman, Becky Miller and others were quoted in the story. You're also wrong about the story's "lead." The story begins on page 16 with a lead about Mike Lindberg.
EVERYTHING NEW IS BAD
Your NIMBY article deserves several comments ["Not in My Back Yard," WW, Feb. 18, 1998]. First, your bias shows in quoting author William Kunstler [sic] out of context. While he spends a lot of energy decrying suburban sprawl, his most telling comment describes the underlying reason for the NIMBY attitude; to wit, Americans don't want anything new because they don't believe their culture can produce anything of value. Look around, in some parts of the city almost everything that's being built is pure dreck--ugly, cheap, plywood-sided snout houses with a two-car garage facing the street and a concrete front lawn. The cheapest, meanest house built before 1930 is better quality, better design than much of what's being built today. We may hate sprawl and love our downtown and other urban amenities, but for most Portlanders the higher density that civic leaders are trying to foist on us is anathema to our lifestyle goals. I don't believe it's either selfish or unenlightened to want Portland to be peaceful, spacious, low-key and green. That's why we came here and what we like about it. What we're seeing is a backlash against growth that's undesirable, unwanted and unnecessary. Our politicians give big subsidies to industries that import a majority of their workers from other parts of the country and then talk about having to "accommodate" growth. Neighborhood activists are self-selected and therefore not always representative of the neighborhood as a whole, but that's the way the City Council wants it because it gives them an easy excuse for overriding community concerns. Otherwise they would have to defer their big plans for neighborhood development to the people's wishes and it would be a lot harder to build housing on designated open space, two-plus-acre recreation centers in public parks or upzone whole single-family neighborhoods for higher-density housing. Stan Kahn Southeast Pine Street ARE THEY ON DRUGS? It comes as no surprise to me that some drug companies lobbied intensely against Hersh Crawford's plan to try and reign in the use of some medications under the Oregon Health Plan ("Let Them Eat Prozac," WW, Feb. 25, 1998). Drug companies (like tobacco companies and every other company for that matter) are in business to make profits, NOT to help the public, no matter what their glossy literature may say. I have a few college friends who now work for drug companies, and they freely admit that their employers are totally ignoring rare diseases that only strike a small number of people because even if they find a cure or effective treatment, sales would be so small due to the low number of patients involved that the companies would not make enough money. Which brings up another point: Drug companies defend their outrageous prices by saying that they have to recoup their research costs for developing the drugs. What they won't say is that most (although not all) costs for drug and disease research is prepaid by U.S. taxpayers, either through the federal government (via CDC and NIH) or private foundations (such as the Pediatric AIDS Foundation). Therefore, most of the horribly inflated prices that we all pay at the drug counter amounts to little more than corporate welfare. If welfare to impoverished individuals is so bad, why is welfare to high-profit corporations considered "OK"? Nobody has ever been able to give me an answer to that one. Jane Bolton, Southwest 35th Drive
BEING FUNNY ISN'T A CRIME
Apparently I'm supposed to feel guilty for laughing at Sylvia, the current offering at Portland Center Stage. That must be the intended outcome of Steffen Silvis' snide, haughty review ("Put to Sleep," WW, Feb. 25, 1998). As a third-year subscriber with several friends, I welcome the challenging (Bacchae Revisited) and the classic (Macbeth), but I also enjoy being entertained once in a while. Sylvia is a very funny show, and there's nothing wrong with that. This late in the century haven't we learned that art can be engaging? Must it always be ugly and difficult? As a professional musician and arts educator I reject that notion. There is nothing wrong with being fiscally responsible either. One major Portland theater company just went broke. Is it a crime that Elizabeth Huddle programmed two comedies this year, bringing in audiences that can subsidize other important works that will never attract a mass audience? The Oregon Symphony Orchestra has "Mozart 'til Midnight" and Portland Baroque Orchestra has an annual Messiah. There are no performances at all if the bills can't be paid. Elizabeth Huddle appears to be a pragmatic artist. How refreshing, and how responsible. Michael Connolly,
Associate Professor of Music,
University of Portland
North Chautauqua Boulevard |
