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Accountability Needed in KB Home/Pet Cemetery Flap
After reading your article ("Easement Issues," Currents, Feb. 3) about the battle between KB Home and Darla Norrish, owner of the Pet Cemetery of Tucson, I feel the need to comment.I'm the owner of eight plots at the Pet Cemetery, and it's been very comforting to be able to call on Darla when one of my pets has died, and it's been comforting to go and visit the gravesites. The cemetery was easy to get to, and it was peaceful to drive past the trees and down the long roadway into the cemetery. Now, trying to get into the cemetery is awful. Where is the pedestrian access?
Darla is a wonderful person and doesn't deserve the bad treatment she's received from KB Home and the city of Tucson. I am appalled that the city is letting KB continue working on the easement at the cemetery. It's plain that they can do whatever they please, just because they're a big company and have a lot of money. It seems to me that if you're big enough, legal documents don't matter. My guess is KB Home must be in somebody's pocket at the city.
Whoever gave this work the go-ahead without Darla's consent should be held accountable.
Mary R. Devine
A Letter in Favor of Danehy's Feelings on School Junk Food
I always read Tom Danehy's column. Sometimes he is funny, sometimes bland/stupid, and sometimes, he makes me mad enough to spit.His Feb. 3 column regarding junk food in schools is right on.
Give 'em hell, Tommy!
Charles Wasson
Now, A Series of Letters Against Danehy's Feelings
The logic of Danehy's Feb. 3 column was pretty weak. Since some students spend a lot of time involved in fund-raising activities we should reduce their financial burdens by selling them nutritional garbage? Hey, why not sell cigarettes? Or better yet, how about beer, like they have in Japanese and European vending machines? Gee, just think of all the money that could be raised that way.The students who purchased these items would merely be exercising their rights as citizens. We sure wouldn't want the government deciding what students can and cannot buy. Never mind the fact that young people often make poor choices in part because of their immaturity.
It's a great idea and deserves to pass. The health and well-being of our children is part of the public schools' mandate. They often feed poor kids. There's no reason why they have to feed them crap or allow it to be sold to them. (If parents want to send their children to school with a lunch full of bologna on white bread, a bag of Cheetos and a Twinkie, all washed down with a Pepsi, they'll still be able to.)
I read the Weekly almost every week. I often read Danehy's column. Sometimes, I even enjoy it. Frankly, this one was ridiculous.
Mark Schiff
A Movie Suggestion for Mr. Danehy
Tom Danehy would gain some much-needed insight into the world of junk and fast foods by watching Super Size Me. In the documentary, Morgan Spurlock shows that schools with healthy-lunch programs have more attentive students, and that schools that give kids choices between vending-machine junk food, soda and pizza on a daily basis have a wide array of problems, from ADD to obesity. My own high school in Prescott Valley had vending machines everywhere, and students who couldn't come up with the $3-$5 (minimum) needed for a lunch--which was a choice between pizza, burgers, sandwiches or a hidden salad bar--would spend 80 cents on chips or a candy bar. Every day. And we didn't have lockers, either, so bringing a lunch was not convenient.Walt Staton
Danehy's Junk-Food Stances Shows Conservative Stripes
I think it's great that the Tucson Weekly features a conservative column. I just wish Tom Danehy would stop calling himself a liberal.His column on the proposed junk-food vending ban shows his real stripes. Obviously, Danehy has some kind of sore spot regarding vegetarians--whenever the general subject of reasonable nutrition is so much as broached--that brings out his inner Limbaugh, but here's a news flash for you, Tom: Schools are places where kids are told what they can and can't do, say, wear and even (by definition) think and believe. And that's OK--it's a school. Children and teenagers need to be told what to eat because they're children and teenagers. What kids eat affects their behavior and how well they think and learn, junk food adversely so.
Any real liberal would know that the increasing presence of junk and fast food in schools is the result of a major push by the companies to penetrate this captive market, with typical corporate disregard for children's health and ability to learn. And schools' chronic underfunding gives them a wonderful opportunity to do that. Like a good conservative, Danehy champions fake individual "freedoms"--i.e., kids' freedom to buy junk food at school--that are detrimental to the public interest but great for corporations.
A ban on junk-food vending? I say it's about time.
John Cafiero
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