ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Eat The Crown!

Dear ETS! and ETS! Readers:

I apologize to any eastsiders who missed out on last week's issue of ETS! In the rush to escape the Eastside and tramp about the U.K. for a week's R&R, I didn't realize I still had 35 undelivered copies of ETS! in my backpack. Seems your delivery boy got redirected to the U.K. where he left little stacks of ETS! outside British Parliament, beside various plundered antiquities in the British Museum, and in a few cozy spots of one of the most impovershed towns in Europe, Liverpool. Judging from the lack of such periodicals in the U.K. and how quickly these little stacks grew ever smaller, I would like to make a proposal. We should add the U.K. to our list of distribution points. Any volunteers to deliver them next week?

--Jeff Gustafson, Crossroads Distributor

Jam the Bridge!

ETS!,

Maybe you know how to contact Critical Mass - I can't find them on the internet and the NW Bike Foundation is non-commital. Wouldn't it be delicious if Critical Mass took advantage of Bike to Work Day and did a morning ride over the 520? Wouldn't it be marvelous? Can you help me find them?

Thanks...

--Pam Mandel, via e-mail

Save the Trees!

Hi!,

I am so saddened to see the massacre going on in our city. Everywhere I go this spring I see butchered street trees. As a street tree volunteer, I have to wonder why we should even continue if the city is going to do such a horrible job of trimming for lines? Since when do we allow TCI and City Light to dictate our forest practices? Have some balls!

The tree scape along 15th Ave. S. on Beacon Hill has been irreparably damaged. The trees received a straight topping that makes them look like broccoli. Never, never has that method of cutting been promoted by any tree advocate I have ever met. Why is the City doing this?

The cuts made on the trees lining the north edge of Lincoln Park are fatal. Some of those trees will not survive. And the shapes are grotesque! The Olmsted brothers are turning in their graves!!!

We need to be using a mixture of tools, techniques, and practices including intermittent replacement, best trimming practices, and restraint!!! Please STOP cutting now!!!!

Frederica Merrell, tree steward and disgusted citizen, Seattle, WA

Fog Hacking

Hi --

Thanks for Maria Tomchick's vitriolic take on the state legislature and our gov (Sinking Ship, April 28). She nicely hacked through that mile-deep fog bank known as state politics. And I thought Gary Locke meant it when he said he was the education governor.

Kent Miller, via e-mail

Thugs With Calculators

Dear ETS!

Couldn't help extrapolating from your article this past week regarding the New Jersey state police official who was canned because of his remark regarding the tendency of minorities to be most easily suspected of drug crimes. It just had to make me wonder if anyone has ever noticed any statistical pattern indicating that it's mostly middle and upper middle class white people working in offices who are likely to embezzle or commit big-money fraud (and to then explain away their actions by claiming some sort of psychological stress, or by saying they weren't aware that whatever it was might reasonably be deemed at least improper if not illegal).

Kerry Canfield, Portland, OR

P.S. Of course, the possibly statistically demonstrable criminal tendencies of middle- and upper middle-class white people might be attributable merely to the fact that such people are the most likely to wind up in such positions of power as seem sufficient to grant them the liberty of committing such criminal acts. (Don't fail to note the interesting color component of that persistent euphemism "white-collar crime.")

That's No Excuse

Hi,

I'm not from the US. Are you negros?

--Allan Speedy, New Zealand, via e-mail

Homework, Sexism, and the Editor(s)

ETS!,

I am writing because I don't wish Ms. Tomchick to think that everyone judges her work by her gender. As nearly as I can tell, she tends to write about international matters and Mr. Parrish writes about local ones, though there's obviously some overlap. That's the only difference I've noticed other than style, really--both are generally producing thoughtful, well-written, impeccably-researched, cheerfully opnionated pieces of journalism.

You are both doing exemplary work, and I hope that you don't let the occasional pinhead complaints get you down. Pinheads are vocal. There are quite a few of us who simply enjoy what you are doing while getting on with our own lives and trying to make a difference in our own way, and we don't write as often--except when the letter column you print makes us feel guilty about getting the impression that complaints is all you get. Please, please keep it up. We need you. I often refer my students to your paper simply because no one else covers the stories you do.

Greg Hatcher, via e-mail

ETS!,

I am glad you give the cites; I always like to think that I'll read more of whatever.

As for sexism, in reading your zine for some months now, I can't tell who writes what, Maria or Geov AND that's fine because I don't think political opinions should be a matter of gender anyway. But I do like having a female signature; at the very least it may encourage school girls to consider political journalism as a career.

As for Maria's response to the letter writers asking for homework help or whatever, seems to me a form one or two sentence response is kinder/nicer/and more effective than a flat "no" and "fuck off" or whatever. It seems to me a bit weird that one of your volunteers would quit over the issue.

Although I don't agree with all you write and don't know all the ins, let alone the outs of the Seattle area, I am glad you exist and shall tomorrow put a small contribution in the mail.

--Betsy Cramer, Santa Barbara, CA

Maria/Geov,

As someone who runs a web site that elicits a lot of homework help questions, I can understand your frustration on the matter. However, I also agree with Michael that saying "fuck you" to someone looking for a good source of information or two on Kosovo/recycling/dog walking may not be the best way to proceed if you want to keep people in the fold, so to speak.

But, like the subject line sez: I'm a librarian and I can help. I'd be happy to take a little extra time to respond to your homework helper questions with either a nice "gee, we don't write research papers for you, try the library..." form letter, or a more useful "a good place to start looking for information on russian defectors is..." I've been working at the Internet Public Library [as well as the Shoreline Community College Library] long enough to know how to sum up the answers quickly or know it's hopeless. And I'm all for encouraging folks to use the library.

If this is at all interesting to you, let me know and I'll give you my work email address [I could do all this at the refdesk I bet] and you can forward away. My only request is that you give me some sort of nifty highfalutin' title like Supreme Informational Potentate. Folks can contact me at www.librarian.net.

Thanks and good luck.

--Jessamyn, via e-mail