WW welcomes letters to the editor via mail, e-mail or fax. Letters must be signed by the author and include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Preference will be given to letters of 250 words or less. Bad Karma Graffiti vandals are not artists and they are not authors; they are criminals. Criminals just as shoplifters or check forgers are. What they steal is our serenity through visual pollution. As your article ["Scrawl of the Wild," April 21, 1999] so ably articulated, they not only instill annoyance but fear. They steal from their victims by causing them to spend time and money removing their intellectual vomit. Any time you draw or write on property which is not yours, you are committing a destructive act. No amount of icing can make it constructive. It is not earth-friendly. Spray painting is not good for the earth, nor are the paints and chemicals used to abate the eyesores. The right to have your work viewed must be earned. Take your work to art galleries and publishers, like everyone else. If you want to write on a building or a house, buy one and do with it as you please. Karma-wise, unlike shoplifting or check forging, which affect only a limited number of people with each act, there are untold thousands who view with distress each scrawling of the spray paint vandal. These perpetrators should consider that for each person they offend, they will get back an equal offense, and for each act of graffiti, they will need to perform an act of an equally constructive degree in order to atone. The time to start atonement is now. Brad Shelton Southeast Market Street Relatively Speaking It is April 23, and I am reading your cover article about the scourge of graffiti artists, or criminals as the article is quick to point out that they are ["Scrawl of the Wild," April 21, 1999]. I have learned that those who are primarily responsible for this criminal activity are "usually white boys age 12-22." We are also told that they transform into "daredevil outlaws by night, with code names like Creep, Loser, Spoil, Ming, Nepoe, Siren and Vicious." For some reason I found I was looking for it to include the name "Trenchcoat Mafia." It wasn't there. But I was struck with the magnitude of the campaign against these criminal artists, when I can only begin to imagine how much Littleton, Colo., would have given to have had grafitti be their most pressing issue of the week. Joy C. Al-Sofi Northeast 22nd Avenue Port Holes Regarding Patty Wentz's "Mission Impossible?" [WW, April 21, 1999], if I literally said, "I have seen no specific instances (of) any environmental improvements based on Port activities," I confess it was hyperbole. To be fair, they have made a conscientious effort recently to work with the Columbia Slough Watershed Council and are currently working on bank stabilization techniques to improve habitat. There are a handful of other examples I have seen over my 17 years of working with the Port. Some individual Port employees have a great environmental ethic. Others have little regard for the environment, citizens or those pesky natural resource agencies who try to keep them honest. As an institution, however, the Port has an abysmal environmental record. It's Mike Thorne's job to reward the former and weed out the latter. The Port has failed to rectify the filling of a 150-foot-wide riparian area along the Columbia Slough despite years of promises to restore it; fought Metro's floodplain and water quality regulations and went "back door" to weaken them; has unmet wetland mitigation obligations; pressured other agencies that are too "aggressive" regarding environmental standards; and indirectly promoted filling of wetlands at the "radio tower" prison. It will take more than a new mission to do their work "in balance with the region's environmental goals." On-the-ground fish and wildlife habitat improvements would be a good place to start. They need to "show us the money." The Port should earmark a percentage of their profits from wetland fills and other environmental impacts for an endowment similar to Oregon Community Foundation's fund for the Tualatin River that was created with $900,000 from a settlement from a citizen lawsuit. That fund provides grants for nonprofit organizations and agencies to perform public education and restoration projects. Erik Sten recommended something similar but was rebuffed by Mike Thorne. I wish newly hired environmental staff the best of luck in bringing the Port up to environmental snuff. The Port is, after all, a public agency that should be held to the highest environmental standards. Mike Houck Audubon Society of Portland Northwest Cornell Road - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published April 28, 1999