A ploy in the valley

Dear Editors,

With no warning, the planning hearing to be held last Thursday, Feb. 20, was canceled, even though many of us had gone to great lengths to attend. The purported reason was that the designer of the catastrophic River Trails Ranch boondoggle was too ill to explain the Berkeley-bred project. Developers frequently use this last minute cancellation tactic when opposition is mounting. (Current poll is nearly 4:1 against it.)

What is despicable is that the city planners apparently bought into the ploy. It seems they have already made up their minds to recommend this ill-conceived and incongruous project and only intended to present the developer’s “dog and pony show” to attempt to pacify those of us who oppose putting a population the size of Bayfield in the pristine Animas Valley.

The proposed modification of CR250 is not feasible and would present not only a traffic hazard but a safety hazard since it would be the only exit from the proposed human ant farm. Since “flagpole” annexation has lost its appeal, now they must resort to “tadpole” annexation, finding congruity only in the middle of a river bed. River Trails Ranch is not needed and will bankrupt Durango with its demands for infrastructure, fire and police protection, and water.

Speak out to stop this environmental abortion. It is our world and our future! Do not let it be destroyed by greed and lack of foresight.

– John Nelson
via e-mail

Down with feminist thought police

Dear Editors,

I just read Dave Stephenson’s piece “Another Look at Jugs.” I couldn’t agree more. He’s right! The original complaint to which he is responding against the “Jugs and Hardtails” name and Three Rivers Brewery is itself silly PC ranting trying to tell us how to see and think and what to feel.

The writer of that piece needs to lighten up, have a laugh ... get a life! I don’t own a bike, but I’ve always kind of enjoyed Jugs and Hardtails’ double entendre nonetheless. Same for Three Rivers Brewery. It is a fine bar, great place to socialize. I don’t need to be lectured how to PC “SEE” the world. I can figure it out on my own, thanks anyway. Thanks to the Telegraph for allowing another voice to be heard and not leaving our brains out for the Feminist Thought Police to try and pickle.

– Jim Fuge
via e-mail

Battling bark beetles

Dear Editors,

Moving here fearing disaster from the Y2K bug, I’m now a student of Mother Nature’s conditions for saving my healthy pinon trees from ravaging beetles. Spending weeks researching action items, I generated a flyer available at the county building and planning departments and extension office. I recently learned that the ponderosa pines now have their own rapacious bug. The lightning rod for my attention is that dead ponderosa pines and dead pi`F1on tree needles expand fire areas and are flash-points for explosive fast-burning fires.

I’m learning that what’s best for land management in high desert country differs extensively from measures I’ve taken back East and in California. So whether or not any of us have pi`F1ons and/or ponderosas, fire dangers affecting most of us are geometrically increased. This calls for doing mitigation or being a “vehicle on the information highway” for others. Since beetles take flight when day-time temperatures are at a sustained 50 to 60 degrees, time is of the essence.

The County Extension Office is producing an event, “Bark Beetle Management Strategies,” for those who think there is no way to save healthy trees and those who don’t know what to do. It will take place Saturday, March 8, from 10 a.m. to noon at the La Plata County Fairgrounds and will include a panel of experts. Before I interviewed some of them, I was absolutely opposed to using any chemicals and wasting firewood by open-area burnings. That has changed. For information, contact Kevin Mallow 247-2308 or Kent Grant 247-5250.

– Susan Franzheim
Durango

Happy to see the Toh-Atin Indian

Dear Editors,

I recently read the letter from Shelly Perlmutter and must disagree with his request to remove the Toh-Atin Gallery sign. I have local Native American blood streaming through my veins and find no insult in this sign on W. Ninth Street. In fact, it is nice to see it after many years of obscurity. Perlmutter obviously has little knowledge of Durango history and that this sign was the Chief Diner logo, a former local landmark where hungry locals would gather 24 hours a day on North Main during the 1970s/80s. The sign also has the nostalgic “Route 66” tourist appearance that was prevalent in the 1950s, an almost cheesy look but worth remembering, especially to those who didn’t get to see sights like this during that era. I suppose that if Perlmutter still has a problem with the sign, he could set up an offer to buy the Toh-Atin indian and gallery and replicate it to a “politically correct” lifeless, sterile void that replicates the town/area he grew up in. Sure glad I don’t live in that town!

– David Ortiz,
Four Corners local