Letting native fish go native
Regarding "Latest tool for saving fish: Pollute the river" (Oct. 15): I agree with the proposed upstream "poisoning." We, as humans, make mistakes and often they result from greed, or wanting to conform the world around us to our own desires. Through introducing foreign species of fishes to over-angled areas we have endangered the genetic purity of several nearly endangered and already endangered species of native fish.
We have the opportunity to correct our mistakes. By depleting the Cherry Creek area of these foreign species of fish, and by replenishing this same area with the native species that we nearly destroyed, we can correct one of the mistakes that we made not long ago.
I say act now, before the genetically pure populations of these native fish are gone.
Benjamin Boyles Rexburg, Idaho
Only men are retired?
I must comment on the irony of having a story in the Oct. 25 issue ("Election coverage of women: more on personality, less on issues") on the lack of substance in media coverage of women candidates, followed by a story ("Retired. And ready to work.") in the same issue on the growing employability of retirees in which not one of the older workers interviewed is female.
Surely women have been a presence in the work force long enough to be included in a story that purports to be about "senior workers" - not "senior male workers."
Kathryn Hobbie Battle Ground, Wash.
Radio changed the 20th century
Regarding "A thousand years of science and technology" (Oct. 27): Most people would agree Gutenberg's development of the printing press is one of the cornerstones of modern society.He had his printing press and type fonts taken from him by a court decision in a lawsuit.He didn't profit from his invention, and died as a pauper.The books we think of as his were primarily printed and sold by the winner of the lawsuit - a financial backer of his invention.
It still makes me sad whenever I think that the inventor of such a magnificent tool of the world civilization did not reap rewards from it.
My grandfather had his own perspective on which technological advance had the greatest impact.He was born in 1896 and he remembered running in from the fields of the farm in Illinois to watch a new horseless carriage drive by. He watched the astronauts land on the moon on his color television.
I once asked him which technology development had made the most difference in his life.He answered without hesitating that radio had made the biggest difference in people's lives.
Before radio, most people lived fairly isolated lives. After radio began, people felt they were part of a greater community and could feel connected to it all the time.
He felt it changed all of society drastically, radically, and almost overnight.
Harmon Everett Flint, Mich.
Solons in the salon
The story "Washington mourns lost art of conversation" (Oct. 22), had one sentence that sums up all the frustration and disconnection voters today have with their elected officials: "By 1983 he [Schick] couldn't get more than four or so to show up; most were too busy going to fund-raisers."
It appears to many of us that the only thing our lawmakers are truly interested in is their own reelection, spending more time raising money and flying home to test the political climate of their own electorate than taking care of the business to which they were elected.
Betty Bradley Franklin, N.C.
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