Letters to the Editor

Love the cookbook, forget the bunny

In Pacific Northwest April 16 (Taste, "Becoming Flexitarian") Greg Atkinson writes, "The catalyst that drove me back to the land of omnivores was unique. In my honor, a friend had butchered a rabbit when I was coming to dinner, and it seemed unthinkable to say I couldn't eat it." I find this a lame excuse. I find it even more offensive on Easter Sunday when all the children love to do the "Bunny Hop" to look for goodies.

What if Atkinson had been in China and a friend would have just killed a dog or a cat especially for him, he would have eaten it? Or, if a friend had painstakingly grown some marijuana in his honor, he would have felt compelled to smoke it?

It is important to have beliefs and principles to stand on, and if friends don't understand, it's their problem.

Café Flora and its new cookbook are great, so I definitely enjoyed most of the article. Bon appétit, sans viande!

— Claudine Erlandson, Shoreline

Callahan mean-spirited

I found both the content and timing of the "Gingerbread man" cartoon on Page 2 of Pacific Northwest magazine April 9 to be personally offensive. The content, it seems to me, ridicules and demeans an important aspect of the Christian faith, that Christ died for our sins on Good Friday. The timing of the cartoon's appearance at the start of Holy Week, an important time for most Christians, seemed to me to be very mean-spirited. I wonder why it is considered OK to ridicule aspects of the Christian faith while other religious beliefs seem, at least to me, to be treated more respectfully by most of the media.

— Nancy Scarborough, Bellevue

Cartoon offensive

I found the Callahan comic in the April 9 issue profoundly offensive. That it would be published at the beginning of Holy Week intensifies the insensitivity and hubris of both the cartoonist and publishers. It seems offensive speech/communication is now somehow equated with literary courage. I find it sophomoric and lacking in elemental respect for the many millions of people in our nation who regard Jesus Christ as God — the one who sacrificed his life for us all.

— Daniel Perrin, Newcastle

The 14 percent solution

I heartily agree with your conclusions concerning the alcohol content in today's wines (Taste, "Punch Drunk," March 26). Several years ago I quit buying any with 14 percent or above. I have gone through my cellar and pulled all wines with 14 percent or above for immediate consumption. When offered a wine, the first question I ask is alcohol percentage. Keep up the good work going against the tide of popular wine-critic thinking.

— Erv Collingridge, Edmonds

Lighter on the 'punch,' please

Thank you for confirming what I perceived was happening to the wine trend (Taste, "Punch Drunk," March 26). About four years ago I was in Paris and couldn't figure out why I could drink so much wine with my meals. Not only did I not get tipsy, but the wine blended much better with what I was eating (I was only eating at neighborhood bistros where I also suspect the wines could have been diluted with water).

The big bold ones not only overpower food, but I cannot afford to get tipsy on weeknights when I have to sleep well and get up the next morning. Now I never buy a wine without checking the alcohol content. I also don't recommend diluting them with water — unless you're in France where everything tastes better.

— Patricia Stambor, Seattle

The meaning of 'green'

Two of the three projects featured in Architecture 2006, "Going Green" (April 9) struck me as a couple more oversized, awkward, quasi-Craftsman houses that sit on their lots like houses on a Monopoly board. We see far too many of them in Seattle these days. They steal views, breezes and dappled sun as they overpower urban lots and, in some cases, flout local rules. Aren't other key parts of "eco-ethics" the idea, as Val Easton put it so well in her article in the same issue, "living lightly on the land and minimizing your mark on the earth"? Some of these projects don't pass the sniff test, but instead reek of hypocrisy.

— Meredith Auerbach, Seattle

Ground Zero got it wrong

It is clear that Alex Fryer admires the protesters he wrote about ("The Vigil," April 2), and maybe that's why some critical questions were overlooked. The most critical one is, "Were they right?"

Were they right back in the 1980s when they prophesied nuclear devastation? No. Were they right in saying that Reagan's policies would bring about WWIII? No. Far from it. Not only did the Soviet Union have to pull back on spreading communism, it then crumbled under pressure to keep up with Reagan's SDI and other weapons plans, and now millions of people live in freedom. Just ask a Latvian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, East German, Czech, etc. etc.

As to Anne Hall's fatuous statement that Jesus would be protesting nuclear submarines if he were walking the earth right now, I wonder where in the Bible it says that Jesus went around protesting Roman weapons factories. Jesus came to live the perfect life and to die for our sins so that we can be saved, not from some man-made conflagration but from eternal apocalypse (i.e., hell).

Why are the Ground Zero people ignored by the majority of people? Because they were wrong and because they are irrelevant. We did have WWIII. It was called the Cold War, and we won it. The peace movement had nothing to do with it, contrary to Jim Douglass' wishful thinking. Nations do not achieve peace and freedom through capitulation, not when there are evil nations out to conquer them.

— Shannon West, Edmonds

Thank you for your article, "The Vigil," in Pacific Northwest magazine (April 2). I appreciate the devotion and determination of the people who are still demonstrating. I had forgotten in the last few years that those submarines are still there. Thank you for reminding us. If we can't demonstrate, we can pray.

— Eleanor Anderson, Lynnwood

Where is the need for such firepower?

The article in Pacific Northwest magazine ("The Vigil," April 2) was an eye-opener. It is rare to see this kind of coverage in the press. Yes, it looks like we've found the weapons of mass destruction right here in Puget Sound.

The government would prefer to keep sub-base Bangor out of sight and mind, hidden behind the trees and barbed wire. But let's do the math — nine Trident submarines, each carrying 24 nuclear missiles, each missile carrying eight 450-kiloton nuclear weapons. That's a lot of nukes!

We need to ask ourselves why we need so many nuclear weapons. Trident (and the rest of our nuclear deterrent) was designed for fighting the Cold War (that ended years ago). But our government seems to be intent on fostering a new cold war.

Recently people have been asking why some nations should possess nuclear weapons and others should not. Perhaps the question should be rephrased so that we ask why any nation should possess these weapons. The longer they exist, the greater the risk that one (or more) will explode, either accidentally or on purpose.

It is high time for people of conscience to call for nuclear abolition.

— Leonard Eiger, North Bend

Send letters to the editor to Pacific Northwest magazine, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111, or e-mail pacificnw@seattletimes.com. Include a telephone number for verification.