LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The story on the new central library ("Brutal Beauty," April 25) is inspiring and full of promise.

Unfortunately, it's going to be difficult to experience the comfort of interior spaces brought about by the dark outside when current and soon-to-happen tax cuts will require closing the library at night.

While civic leaders have great things is mind, many voters refuse to think beyond their own back yard. Will our civic life be forever bound by this small-think mob mentality? Can we find it in ourselves to see the common good as also personal good?

— Stephen Lamphear, Burien

History lessons

Maria Luz Lara Lopes ("Grand Dames," May 9) did not open "the city's first authentic Mexican restaurant" in Seattle. My parents called her Lucy when she worked for them at their Mexican restaurant: Campos Mexican Restaurant in the University District. Some of her food was based on my parents' and uncle's recipes. My father will send you articles from The Seattle Times that talk about their restaurant way before Lucy ever started a Mexican restaurant in this area.

I know it's not easy researching this kind of story, but I would think you can do a fairly simple search of your own database of past articles to check facts.

My father and uncle were well known as being the experts in Mexican food back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Besides running their restaurant, they supervised a large exhibit/booth at the Seattle World's Fair serving Mexican food.

— Marcos E. Campos, Brier

Raining caterpillars

Congratulations to Lynda V. Mapes for her coverage on April 18 ("The Caterpillar Diaries") of the seven-year plague, for that's the interval I remember being touted by supposedly knowledgeable individuals back in the mid-'80s.

Let's see, that would be roughly three "blooms" ago. I lived on Vashon Island at the time, habitat of many an alder and fruit tree.

We performed Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" at the Blue Heron Center for the Arts in late spring 1987, with windows open to the perfume of lilacs.

The drip-dropping sound on leaves was not rain, and the roads were slimed yellow-green.

I distinctly remember being distracted from delivering my iambic pentameter lines by the form of a furry, worm-like yellow creature writhing its way along Dromio's collar.

Why the gross-out quotient? Because there are so darn many of them. They will eat us alive!

— Roxanne Kenison, Seattle