Letters to the Editor

By ANDREW M. FRASER
Los Alamos

Dear Councilors,

I see that broadband is on the agenda for your meeting Tuesday.

I’ve read the agenda item and the attachments. While I would be pleased if you simply took the Recommended Action of directing “[the] County Manager to pursue a procurement for an open access network operator […]”, that Recommended Action ignores the weakness of general telecommunication infrastructure in the County that the outage in December demonstrated, and it fails to give guidance about the values the Manager should consider in pursuing the procurement.

I recommend that you Read More

By MARK DEVOLDER
Los Alamos

During the early months of the 2008 Recession, I panicked. The daily news was terrible. I did not think that things would ever get better. Things did get better, but hidden from view was the mounting US Federal debt ($10 trillion in 2008 and $31.4 trillion in 2023).

The value of homeowner equity in the US increased from approximately $8.77 trillion in 2010 to approximately $21.2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020. By the way, both political parties had a hand creating the mounting debt – so no finger pointing please.  

As a result of the worsening economy in 2008, I hoped for the Read More

By MICHAEL DOLEJSI
Board Member
Los Alamos County Transportation 

Increasing transportation by bicycle benefits both riders and non-riders alike. Along with the direct health benefits and reduction of emissions, higher adoption of cycling can relieve the road stress experienced by drivers as well.

The recent Transportation Board presentation by Hermann Geppert-Kleinrath discussed the merits of bicycling and conjectured that with cost-effective infrastructure changes, Los Alamos County would increase how safe potential bicyclists would feel riding and actually get them on their Read More

By REID PRIEDHORSKY
Los Alamos

I was disappointed to read this past Monday’s general flood of MLK “tributes” and quotes that ranged from out-of-context to the point of uselessness (e.g., our county PR department’s “I have a dream” social media quote with nothing further) to flat-out distortions that promote the opposite of King’s goals.

In reality, King’s views were nuanced, quite radical, and promoted specific policies. Dr. King’s concerns included institutional racism and a lot of social justice issues beyond racism. The problems King worked on in the 1960s have not been “solved”, and Read More

By ADALAIDE JACOBSON
White Rock

I am not opposed to well-maintained tennis courts or additional courts, if needed, in the County.

I do question the wisdom of creating eight new tennis courts.

In their letter to the Los Alamos Daily Post of Dec. 2, 2022 (link), the Los Alamos Tennis Club directors and the Los Alamos Pickleball Club representative stated:

“While the project has been addressed at various times since 2016, it has perpetually been on the back burner these past 8 years. In the meantime, maintenance on the courts was deferred while waiting for decisions on a new tennis complex, although Read More

By MARK DEVOLDER
Los Alamos

Decades ago, I read an article about a 90-year-old lady on a limited income eating cat food.

When Sophia Loren left Italy, she was dirt poor. After becoming an affluent actress, she was quoted as saying something like the following, “Once you have been poor, you never lose the feeling that you could lose it all tomorrow.”

Depression-era personnel who worked at LASL in the 1940’s also knew how to deal with privation. Actually, they seemed to thrive on it and considered their experiences to be an adventure. Ah, the Manhattan Project days. Also during WWII, the Nazis took Read More

By TERRY GOLDMAN
Los Alamos

It is very rare for me to have a substantive disagreement with John Bartlit but I think he understates the need for leaderships in the House and Senate (link).

Yes, the parties have agreed to abuse the power of the positions greatly. Nonetheless, in any large group, there must be a substantive leader — the ‘decider’, as a President has noted. In both Houses of Congress, the leader corresponds quite closely to the prime minister in other versions of democracies.

In the classic example of Great Britain, however, that position is quite fragile, as we see those in leadership Read More

By BILLY RIFE
Los Alamos

As a regular local visitor to our Peggy Pond, we are saddened by witnessing the last presence of Homer the beautiful goose at the pond.

As we arrived this December 26 morning around 9:30 we saw an animal control officer plus a local county truck facing the duty of removing the body of the male goose. The obviously sad female animal control officer carried the dead goose to her truck and placed the carcass in the truck bed.

The remaining female goose (Edna) had been faithfully circling her dead mates body in the water nearest the North end of the pond. She backed away while they Read More

By MARK DEVOLDER
Los Alamos

Reference 1: What are the Biggest Industries in New Mexico – WorldAtlas https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the…

Reference 2: Colorado Fuel and Iron. Wikipedia.

In his response to my letter, Mr. Gopnathan referred to the term, India’s swadeshi (or “national self-sufficiency”). That term might be expanded to include individual people, industry, and all levels of Municipal, State, and Federal government.

The following is from the Reference 1:

A Brief Overview of the Economy of New Mexico

Although the mining sector has scaled down on employees, Read More

GANMAPATHYSUBRAMANIAN GOPNATHAN
Los Alamos  

Apropos to the letter to Editor titled “You Are What You Eat” by Mr. Mark Devolder of Los Alamos:

It is high time American industrialists, entrepreneurs and businessmen introspect the present situation where a major chunk of products are ‘dumped’ on American consumer by Chinese despite the resources like land, labor, capital, brains and infrastructure being available in USA itself.

I am from India. And as Devolder points out with the well known ‘Dandi Yatra’ (pilgrimage to Dani… for making local salt by Mahathma Gandhi. Read More