Letters To The Editor

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Cooperation vital in emergencies

I commend Shane Petersen, and anyone else, for their desire to help at the scene of an accident, rather than being there out of curiosity (“Man convicted of ignoring firefighter’s orders at accident scene,” News, May 14). The latter happens all too often.

I am trained in industrial first aid and CPR. I’m not a professional in the field of lifesaving. Firefighters, emergency medical teams and law enforcement are. First aid and CPR procedures are improved on constantly.

In the last course I took, in December, the instructor said to let professionals take charge upon arrival and follow their lead. Ask them what you can do to help. Cooperating with them could mean the difference between someone’s full recovery, permanent injury or death. We must rely on their knowledge and expertise.

True, emotions and excitement run high in such situations; that’s being human. But victims need us to do the right thing in their behalf, whether it is to apply lifesaving techniques until help arrives or assist emergency crews when they arrive.

Once these professionals do arrive, we must remember that they are now responsible for the safety and welfare of those they are treating. We are only helping them.

A controlled environment brings the best results. Any one of us could depend on it some day.

Proper training is available through free CPR classes at your local fire station or an approved first aid course. Having proper knowledge of what to do will cause us to be better equipped and confident to help those who need us. Michael MacClain Spokane

Help reduce dog bite incidents

This June 10-15, SpokAnimal CARE in conjunction with the Humane Society of the United States and the U.S. Postal Service will recognize National Dog Bite Prevention Week. The goal is to reduce dog bites by promoting responsible pet ownership.

HSUS estimates that over 2 million dog bites are reported annually. Millions more go unreported. Sixty percent of all dog bite victims are children. Last year, over 2,700 letter carriers were bitten while on the job.

Fortunately, this is a problem we can all help solve. Studies show that most dog bites are a result of irresponsible dog ownership. Unsterilized dogs are up to three times as likely to bite than dogs that are spayed or neutered.

Dogs that lack proper training and socialization, that spend long hours chained in the back yard, are much more likely to develop problems of inappropriate behavior, such as aggression. These factors remain consistent in dogs that bite, while other characteristics, such as breed, change from year to year, depending on the popularity of a certain type of dog.

We can prevent dog bites by spaying or neutering our pets, keeping them from roaming, training and socializing them and making them true members of our families. We can teach our children safety around dogs.

Free sterilization vouchers are available in the city of Spokane if you purchase a license for your pet and show proof of residency.

In recognition of National Dog Bite Prevention week, SpokAnimal CARE is offering prevention talks. Please join us in reducing dog bites in our community. Gail B. Mackie, executive director SpokAnimal CARE, Spokane

LAW AND JUSTICE

Stop trying to railroad Paradis

D.F. Oliveria’s May 4 editorial “Eventually Paradis’ pack of lies will end,” was another effort in his obsessive mission to see Don Paradis killed. While dismissing Paradis’ appeals as a litany of lies, Oliveria either ignores or misrepresents facts.

Paradis’ attorney, William Brown, a part-time cop in Coeur d’Alene when he took the case, had no previous criminal trial experience. He failed to call any of six witnesses who would have testified that Kimberly Palmer was killed in Spokane while Paradis was absent. He failed to adequately challenge the testimony of pathologist William Brady that Kimberly died in a creek bed above Post Falls.

In a later trial of Larry Evans on the same murder charge, an experienced lawyer discredited Brady’s testimony and Evans was acquitted. In 1986, five years after the trial, Brown signed a lengthy affidavit acknowledging his failures as Paradis’ attorney, among which was his failure to take free advice from an experienced trial lawyer.

Oliveria should know there’s a law on the books that precludes admission of any new evidence in a capital case 43 days after the trial. No appeals court will accept new evidence - their judgment is based strictly on technical merits of the case.

Former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus, after reviewing this case, concluded that Donald Paradis did not receive adequate counsel and much new evidence has come forth to warrant a serious review of the case. As an Idaho resident concerned with justice, I agree. Buell Hollister Post Falls

OUR YOUNG

Child care: Use right yardstick

Re: “We’re throwing away child-care money” (Opinion, May 4) by Sandra Scarr.

There’s more to this picture. While high-income families have more child care options, this doesn’t ensure high quality care, nor are lower child care fees indicative of low quality.

Fees and state-of-the-art equipment don’t determine quality. The single best indicator of quality is the wages paid to the teacher/providers in a facility.

Many well-educated, experienced providers are forced to leave the profession when they cannot make a livable wage. This turnover radically affects quality, leaving children confused and faced with getting to know and trust yet another new teacher.

Comparing for-profit centers to Headstart is comparing apples to oranges. Headstart is a comprehensive program for the whole family. Headstart serves not only the whole child but the whole family, resulting in self-sufficient, tax-paying families. Money spent for Headstart should be viewed as an investment.

Scarr favors lowering regulated standards for centers to make them more affordable. The only standard that would significantly impact costs is the one regulating the child-teacher ratio. Lowering that standard would threaten children’s ability to establish relationships, to feel secure and be cared for.

All children deserve a quality early childhood program. Parents need one that is affordable. Provider/teachers must have fair compensation to continue this important work.

Sandra Scarr can check with the National Center for Early Childhood Work Force for a current and unbiased report from credible research. Nancy Gerber, president Eastern Washington Family Day Care Association, Spokane

Forget gender; It’s about standards

Criminals share many common factors such as poverty and past abuse. Regardless, criminals cause crime.

Parenting, Norman Nelson, is not a gender issue (“Fatherlessness breeds troubles,” Letters, May 15).

I, as a single-parent mother, set standards of behavior and enforce them. That’s my job as a parent. Setting standards and enforcing them is also my job as a teacher. It has nothing to do with being male or female.

My child and my students will respect me and follow the standards I set if I consistently demonstrate that consequences follow behavior. Such behavior on my part, on the part of society as a whole, will teach our young people to respect others as well as themselves.

Single parenting is the most challenging role anyone can face and I certainly don’t recommend it. However, in some instances having no father is much to be preferred over having a bad father.

It is time for society as a whole to enforce standards of behavior for our young people and to provide support for people who fill such roles as those of parent and teacher. Kathleen Warring Cheney

More necessary than admiring moms

On the face of it, Steven L. Bland, (“Full-time moms are VIPs,” Letters, May 16) you make a good case for stay-at-home moms.

However, not every family is in the financial position to buy bigger and better and it takes two people working to maintain the family’s financial health. Hence, children are put in day care because their parents have no choice.

It is nice that you make so much money that your wife doesn’t have to work, but I have questions: Why is the mother doing all the work of training the next generation? Why is she the only one the child needs? Shouldn’t fathers also take the time to train their offspring? Shouldn’t fathers also be there for their kids? What I have a problem with, Bland, is that, in your letter, you don’t make a case for being a father. Joan E. Harman Coeur d’Alene

Generalization disservice to many

Re: Steven L. Bland’s “Full-Time moms are VIPs” (Letters, May 16).

Your letter really struck a nerve with me. I am a mom with two preschoolers who also works 40 hours a week. I don’t work at my job in order to buy, as you put it, “bigger, better, faster and newer.” That is such a joke!

My paycheck helps put a roof over our heads, a medical insurance policy in our file, gas for our ‘78 wagon and garage sale bargains on my kids’ feet. I use coupons like a demon and cut corners wherever possible.

My kids go to a fantastic in-home day care where they are loved. I can be there in a matter of minutes if they need me.

I point these facts out to you because I know several other women like me who are in the same boat. Your mother and your wife are truly fortunate that they are able to be stay-at-home moms. The fact is, however, that not many women these days have the luxury of making that choice.

Please don’t rush to judge working moms when you have no clue how much we, too, sacrifice for our children. Tracy Sontrop Spokane

LAST WISH AND TESTAMENT

Busybodyism getting out of hand

Animal rights fanatics and their vociferous objections to a Minnesota youth’s desire to participate in a perfectly legal hunt have received abundant news coverage. This shows two things:

First, the media will give absurd amounts of attention to any celebrity whiner who comes down the pike. The utter hypocrisy of Pierce Brosnan objecting to a legal hunt when his recent films depend on extensive unrealistic gunplay, bloodshed and violence for box office appeal is nauseating. He is an actor. Why does his opinion carry any more weight than a normal person’s?

Second, this country has largely forgotten the concept of tolerance that the founding fathers tried to codify. We may not like one another’s opinions or activities, but we should live and let live.

If you don’t like hunting, don’t hunt. If you object to abortion, don’t have one. If you find guns distasteful, don’t own one. But do not try to impose your views on others.

If you do make such an imposition, do not be surprised if the next imposition made discommodes you.

The genuine American ideal of diversity extends beyond ethnicity to opinions and actions, even those we may find personally repulsive.

For my part, I intend to send a contribution to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Bruce D. Thomas Ephrata, Wash.

Animal rights types go too far

In response to “Safari puts Make-A-Wish on animal-rights hit list” (News, May 12): The statement that the Make-A-Wish Foundation would rue the day it affiliated with the likes of Safari Club International shows the true colors of these animal rights people. Make-A-Wish is in the business of making wishes come true for terminally ill kids. Who do these animal rightists think they are?

Now, Make-A-Wish is a bad entity and deserves to be ostracized - just because this charitable organization helped a dying boy enjoy the hunt of a lifetime? There are some messed up values here.

Admittedly, the subject of hunting triggers some highly emotional dialogue. That is not likely to change in the near future. Threats against an organization that has done as much good as Make-A-Wish are cowardly and small, just another ploy by a faction that would abolish an American institution. Sean Tomkinson Fairchild Air Force Base

Name calling won’t win sorry case

Responses caricaturing animal rights activists, as Opinion Editor John Webster has done, always amaze me.

Webster, representing the entire editorial board, implies his position as the intellectual view and dissenting opinions as “whining.”

Whiners exist in significant numbers worldwide. Hindu, Buddhist, Jianist, pacifist Christian persuasions, tofueating, tree-hugging, animal-rights-toting environmentalists are always going to plead their causes on the deaf ears of the consumptively illiterate in order to save the innocents.

Imperialistic domination and dominion with assertion of propriety over the rights and lives of the unintelligible are hardly unique. Justification for exterminating herds of buffalo, decimation of passenger pigeons, unparalleled slaughter of temperate and tropical forests and domestication/eradication of all aboriginal tribes (originally considered animals) were all temporarily legal, while historically proven wrong.

Animal rights activists’ mien is plausible, merely antipodal, from Webster’s.

I take particular offense at his suggestion that habits touting destruction of innocents is “normal” and any opposition is abhorrent to rational thought. All humans die as well, from starvation, predation and overpopulation. Erik has an inoperable brain tumor; the bear doesn’t. Kodiak bears and all other large mammals merely represent acquisitional toys, in an already burgeoning toy chest, for big-game murderers.

Make-a-Wish Foundation, until now, has been sympathetic and coherent with enhancing limited lifespans without contributing to the further erosion of another species’ tenuous existence. My heart aches for the bear, for the wastrel irony of this child’s wish, and the ignorance and lack of foresight of callous administrators involved with the Make-a-Death-Wish Foundation. Robert Oeinck Spokane

Thanks for stomping gripes of wrath

I enjoyed seeing the comments by Opinion Editor John Webster (“Continual whining is getting tiresome, Our view, May 14) regarding the whining minority involved in “single issue tantrums.” He did an excellent job of expressing the feelings of we of the silent majority. Henry W. Gerber Spokane

RELIGION

Bring Tridentine Mass back here

Re: “Cardinal celebrates Tridentine Mass” (News, May 13).

The story makes it sound as if the Tridentine Mass was dug up suddenly out of the catacombs. This is absolute nonsense.

The Tridentine Latin Mass was never banned, only suppressed. The Mass of classic worship of God for centuries, this Mass originated as a Gregorian chant in the early days of the Catholic Church. This Mass has been celebrated without interruption in the province of Wales and many other locations.

Contrary to this information, Vatican II did not dictate or approve an entire new liturgy, nor did it abandon Latin, the official language of the church. Millions of orthodox Catholics never asked for or approved of the Novus Ordo, but in the meantime have been locked out of worshiping through the traditional Tridentine Mass.

Sad to say, the Roman Catholic Church clergy have abandoned the historical teachings of 262 Popes, who are the vicars of Christ on Earth, including our present Pope John Paul II. The Ecclesia Dei encyclical of Pope John Paul II specifies a more generous use of this Mass if the faithful request it.

Orthodox Catholics in Spokane have made several pleas to Bishop William Skylstad. These fell on deaf ears, which makes him in direct violation of his superior, Pope John Paul II. Michelle Lowell Spokane