Editor:
Two letters have been written in the past week about bicycles riding on the sidewalk. Of course, they should not be there, but they have no other safe place to ride, so I give them slack. I would rather share the sidewalk with them than see them injured or dead, which happens all too often.
I am in a wheelchair. Wheeling on the sidewalks every day, I have never once in 6 years had a problem sharing the sidewalks with a cyclist or skateboarder.
What I have had is incessant problems with cars and drivers: cars that block the intersection, cars that turn left right in front of me when I'm crossing on a walk light, cars turning right cutting me off, and three times I have been hit by a car while crossing on a walk light. After that I got a megaphone, which has probably saved my life.
So no, I do not care if cycles are on the sidewalks. They are not the problem. Too many cars and too many pushy aggressive drivers are the problem. Until there is a safe lane for cyclists to ride, I personally will give them slack.
It is so wonderful that people are cycling and not polluting the air we all must breathe. Use the bullhorn to get them off the sidewalk, but otherwise leave them alone and concentrate on the motorists. They are the problem.
Criticize the cause, not the inevitable result.
We are literally choking to death on cars killing us, yet people complain about cyclists on the sidewalk? Where is the perspective?
Kathryn Kosmeya-Dodge
Santa Monica
Seeing holes in psychoanalysis
Editor:
After reading Simone Gordon's column, I first thought the Daily Press had accidentally printed one of its April Fools' Day parodies.
Psychology is the study of the id by the odd. Psychologists tend to over-rationalize a simple perspective without using common sense to take things for what they are when the proof is right before them in black and white.
For example, someone tearing pages out of a book may have mental issues with anger or frustration, yet their perspective would be seen as someone creating a fresh concept. Construction rising out of destruction. A woman standing on her head doing yoga could be seen as developing a new perspective on looking at the world. A man asleep could be construed as one who learns when one does not accept time or for that matter, a person who refuses to use the telephone or talk with someone face-to-face for fear of emotional social contact relying solely on texting feeling that they can still get their same point across without human interaction.
What Ms. Gordon forgets is that the basis of a city that is content begins with its government and its leaders — a government that doesn't betray its people as they follow their laissez faire of do-as-I-say, not -as-I-do credo. The voice of the people falls on deaf ears when they protest and yet are told what is being done for them in a negative light is for the good of the whole when, in reality, it's for the good of the very few and their selfish and subterfuge agendas. The people of Santa Monica are disillusioned and disillusionment breeds contempt, especially when they are thought of as a row of cabbages.
Clearly, this city is expanding beyond the breaking point with over-development and the mass influx of people. Like a balloon constantly being filled with helium with no release valve, the law of physics states that it can only inflate so much before it explodes. People in this city are edgy, if not downright combative, combined with the element of distrust as they live on top of each other, having to deal with issues such has arrogant entitlement whether it be in a car, a bicycle or as a pedestrian on the street or out-of-control construction with many buildings that stand vacant and out of the price range of the general public.
I'm sure Ms. Gordon would like everyone to sit around the campfire, hold hands and sing "Kumbaya," magically transforming us into one big happy city. I'd like to be the first man on Mars.
Whitney Scott Bain
Santa Monica
