Enough
I have always enjoyed “letters to the editor,” which usually show what the community thinks and feels about present realities and invites reactions from others. However, this small group of pseudo-intellectuals with long-winded tirades are so unconscionably boring I have stopped reading them entirely, and now just skip to the crossword puzzle.
Carolyn Hawley, Nice
Finish the roadwork
I’m writing this letter because of our road conditions of Highway 29; the construction job being done between Highway 175 and Live Oak Drive. Our Highway 29 has been torn up and left with way too many potholes. I counted 42 holes going west from Live Oak Drive to Highway 175. There are another 40 potholes the other way. Both ways we have about 80 or so potholes. That makes about 160 bumps we must hit when we travel back and forth from Kelseyville to Lakeport. These bumps are one to three inches each that are very hard on our car, truck and motorcycle.
I was in construction in 1974 to 1977. Got into it when I got out of the Army. I have done a lot of asphalt work, sewer work and concrete work. This was in San Francisco. We could never leave a job like the one we have on Highway 29. These potholes are a danger to our driver. I also ride a motorcycle. When I hit a pothole on my bike it’s all I can do to stay upright. When you’re on a bike it’s like trying to go over a curb on a sidewalk — very dangerous. I feel like we are just nobody. Big city contractors doing our roads.
I have talked with a Caltrans supervisor, and I was told they would never leave a road like our road is. They have what we called “cutback” asphalt. It’s a cold fill that companies use on bumps so that it’s not too hard of a bump to hit. This has been like this for maybe two weeks; way too long for this. We pay our taxes, just like big city people. So I feel this should be addressed real soon, like now. If not to stop our cars from damage and our safety on our roads.
John J. Burciaga, Kelseyville
Language and thought
Much has been written to prove language has nothing to do with thinking, a subject at issue generally because both speech and thought can function silently and privately within the mind. Both thought and language appear to be from the same source, and what cannot be said cannot be thought. It is this same seeming, this powerfully challenging appearance that so goads the young philosophers to such an extensive verbal defense of their noblest concept, thought. I wouldn’t fight about it, but the older philosophers seem less interested in this issue.
The most substantive evidence that makes me see language as part of thought is the fact that, very early in the evolution of man, the human brain gave rise to two areas for the specific use of the faculty of speech. They are Broca’s area, for the composition of language, and Wernicke’s area, for the understanding of language. These areas are located low in the brain and are overgrown by many parts, indicating to me that the composition and understanding of language originated very early in the evolution of man, probably because of the valuable help of interpersonal communication in protecting man from the giant lizards extant in those days. I don’t pretend that anything like a purpose regarding this issue was entertained by some overseeing god or goddess. The whole thing depended on the chance permutations (changes) resulting from genetic recombination. Of many changes, some few with fortunate effect remained, integrating speech and thought in a scattered few in some areas of Earth and eventually in the entire human species over the whole of Earth.
Thought and language, in my opinion, are two parts of one faculty; we can increase our intelligence by learning the meanings of words; and language has a great deal to do with thinking.
Dean Sparks, Lucerne
