Letters to the Editor

First lady of Frisbee

Enjoyed your article about Frisbee and Mary Lowry ("Defying Gravity," July 24). However, I wanted to set the record straight.

Mary has done a tremendous amount of Frisbee stuff, no doubt; however, she was not the first woman to leave her mark here in the Northwest. I know, because I was.

I played on the Olympic Windjammers Ultimate Team before her, and I, in fact, was the first woman to score a goal in the sport at the national level, on the men's team (they didn't have women's teams back then). I played alongside Bill Nye before Mary hit town. I also went to elementary school with her ex-husband, Jeff Jorgenson.

I was the first women's overall state champion, a title I held five times. I was invited to the World Frisbee Championships in 1977 and '78. That was by invitation only, to the top women in the world. I placed second in the $50,000 Frisbee golf tournament (women's division). My trophy still hangs in my house, proudly. My husband, Doug Newland, and I were the main Frisbee organizers here in the 1970s and '80s. Doug was inducted into the Disc Golf Hall of Fame in 1990. We both taught Frisbee classes at the UW Experimental College and various schools, as well as Frisbee dog classes, demos, and we even worked with Special Olympics. We were both World Class Frisbee Masters. I performed at several Husky halftimes, Sonics games, as well as Mariners and Seattle Sounders games in the old Kingdome.

The very first women's local Ultimate Team was called Sky.

Sheryl Newland

Bellevue

Foul for fowl?

Thank you for the "Goose Heaven" cover feature in the July 17 Sunday magazine. David Williams explains that the geese, which were not common here before 1960, were at that time considered to be threatened by dam construction in Eastern Washington. Eggs were carefully harvested, incubated, hatched and moved to safe territory, including lakes around Puget Sound. Since then they have become resident and thrived west of the Cascades.

Now suppose that story was about fish instead of fowl. Populations of exceptionally large salmon thought to be threatened by dam construction were transplanted here, where they thrived in Lake Washington. A great success!

We would be eating them! No one would be complaining about the numbers. Our markets and fine restaurants would all be touting the superior quality of wild, or "free range," animals compared to ones raised in pens.

Why not fowl as well as fish?

Gordon LaZerte

Lake Forest Park

Keep the Callahans coming

I simply love Callahan. The man is genius. If he ever thinks about retiring I hope you can convince him to keep working — and I truly hope that he finds what he does more fun than work.

Ken Osborn

Shoreline

I read with great interest and tears "Goose Heaven" by David B. Williams (July 17). I continue to marvel at my community's attitude toward casual genocide because it inconveniences our leisure activities. We not only tacitly condone, but seem to encourage the activity of mass murder. Why do we send some people to jail for murder and not others? If this opinion reads as drama, then why is the act of mass gassing not considered equally dramatic?

Frida Weisman

David Williams' Pacific Northwest piece on the Puget Sound region's sordid history with Canada geese ("Goose Heaven," July 17) was balanced, yet it omitted key facts.

The author admirably pleas for Washingtonians to "learn to live with these relatively harmless and rather handsome animals, whose only problem is that they poop too much." But what of the Seattle Goose Program, now in its second year of doing just that?

This partnership of Seattle Parks & Recreation, PAWS and The Humane Society of the United States — owing to its poop-scooping volunteers who keep Seattle's most popular beaches and parks free of droppings — has made the story's title ("How their Eden became our hell") irrelevant. We are learning to live with our urban wildlife, and thanks to leadership from Mayor Greg Nickels and his parks staff, we've overcome the rancor surrounding the misguided goose killings of the past while showing that Eden is for people and the rest of God's creatures.

Williams is right that humans, with their golf courses and manicured lawns, have transformed this city into a giant salad bar for geese. Regardless of who arrived first, it's our fault geese stay, and the only moral response is one that allows for peaceful coexistence.

Mark Gross, project manager, Seattle Goose Program

Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS)

I appreciated the pictures of the workers themselves modeling or displaying their own Filson outdoor clothing products ("Made in America," July 3).

What a great idea!

It was certainly more pleasing to the heart, if not the eyes, to see pictures of real people, joyous people. I don't always need to see skinny, sexy, Parisian models whose soul-less faces look like they were permanently frozen by Botox injections.

Shucks, I may have even been willing to take note of the product a little bit more.

Madison Avenue, take note.

Don Ricks

Brier

I thought the Outdoor Living issue of Pacific Northwest ("Gardening In Harmony With Nature," July 10) was the best-designed magazine I have seen in a while. The photos and stories read well together, and there was a good flow to the magazine.

Sometimes I feel like your stories on plants are it — and I brace for the clutter of advertising.

Maybe it is the subject matter that made a difference — a chance to focus on going wild in urban areas. I loved that gardener's work in Kitsap (Nancy Heckler, "Delicious By Design").

Timothy Colman

Seattle

That was a great article about a company that still hasn't outsourced itself to Asia ("Made in America," July 3).

Oh wait, they are. Not only are they outsourcing an entire clothing line in Asia, but they are in the process of outsourcing the warehouse end also.

The workers in the warehouse starting wage is $9.35 an hour, which in itself is extremely low, even for a "high-end clothier" like Filson. They also keep the wages down in the factory by unionizing the garment workers and the warehouse workers. The only retail clothier in the local union of meatcutters.

Does this sound like a company that cares about its employees? Maybe if people knew how well they treat the "hard workers" of Filson, they wouldn't pay $300 for a sweater from Taiwan or a $500 coat from Costa Rica.

Brent Christensen

Seattle

Emory and I (and Keith) were thrilled with the issue ("Outdoor Living," July 10) and of course with the article ("Wild in the City") and wonderful photos.

The mention of the house as a Storey-designed home was especially meaningful to us: Emory and I on late afternoon Saturday bought a couple of Sunday papers to get an early peek.

We had just sat down in those wicker garden chairs with a glass of wine and were reading to each other out loud when an older couple came into the garden from the street and asked: "Are you the Bundys?" Both of us looked at each other and had the same thought: Have people figured out where the garden is already?!!

Astonishingly, the woman introduced herself as a Storey granddaughter. They had just come from the wedding of her niece at the Storey-designed chapel of Epiphany Episcopal Church in the neighborhood. She has memories of the houses, and because they live in Virginia and don't get out here very often, wanted to take a look. We invited them to sit down and have a glass of wine and chatted happily for an hour when they had to return to the church for the reception. Of course they knew nothing of the Pacific Northwest magazine piece, so we sent them away with two copies to share with the other cousins and great-grandchildren.

Today, we hosted several more of the clan who loved seeing the house and garden, and told more stories about their forebears who lived here. What a dream it was for us!

It was truly a dreamy weekend. Thank you so much for a wonderful article on our place, and for the rest of the very interesting pieces on the other extraordinary gardens. We will cherish this. Noel Angell

Seattle

The blatant racism in the housing and real-estate profiles ("Land Rush," June 26 ) was incredibly unprofessional. William Dietrich writes, "Many couples will rotate out to the suburbs to raise a family, not because of race but because of housing prices." In the next paragraph he asserts, "Asians and blacks are dispersing to the suburbs . . . and whites are returning to give close-in neighborhoods such as Cascade Park and Columbia City a second wind." Excuse me?

The Central District is becoming gentrified, but this article and the corresponding pictures promote the misconception that gentrification is an all-white movement. In reality, a multi-hued compendium of educated urban professionals from all ethnicities is revitalizing close-in neighborhoods. Young (white) families chose to move "not because of race," while people of color "disperse."

The parallel profiles of Carol Allen's fire-gutted house (front page of Home/Real Estate) and David Sarti's innovative, thrifty house detailed in the article "Urban Pioneer" (Northwest Living, Pacific Northwest) were also upsetting. Allen is the only African-American homeowner profiled, and hers is a story of loss and ruin while Sarti's story is yet another illustration of white pioneering and success.

Race, economics and housing work together in complicated ways. Oversights and assumptions like the ones written into these articles unwittingly reinforce our system of institutionalized racism and oppression. Contrary to the implications of "Land Rush," people of color do buy and own homes in Seattle.

Miriam Preus

Seattle

Feeling very blue

I enjoyed the "Enter, the blue period" article in Pacific Northwest magazine (Taste, June 12). I have been acquiring and refining a taste in blue cheeses over the past several years and wanted to share my favorite blue cheese — the Roaring Forties blue from Australia (which I have only been able to find in this area at Whole Foods Markets in Seattle and Bellevue). This cheese has more character than any other blue I've tried, and is not for the faint of heart (or tongue). To borrow a wine descriptor, it has the longest "finish" of any cheese I've ever tasted . . . and is a perfect accompaniment for a big, bold Australian shiraz.

Joe McCarthy

Woodinville