Good intentions gone wrong and anger at Schilitt’s post.
Private Eyed
Re: “Social Distortion?” (Briefs, July 31): Steve Schlitt seems to be upset that he got caught for speaking what’s on his mind—that he finds humor in someone dying. There is a reason why the TBSC Facebook group is private. It’s to keep the greater Santa Cruz community in the dark about the actual cruel mentality of many members of the group. My question is why do Santa Cruz citizens and politicians keep supporting this nasty group of people that like to hide behind the façade of their website (designed by Steve) and a loving local media? And moreover, why do these cruel TBSC people keep getting elected and appointed to city offices and commissions?
L Rubin
Santa Cruz
Going Nowhere
Re: “Social Distortion?” (Briefs, July 31): Recent news stories have revealed that Hawaii is offering its homeless one-way plane tickets, and that Nevada is providing its mental patients bus tickets to anywhere else. Sure, it’s an approach Santa Cruz could try, but playing musical chairs with social problems doesn’t really solve anything. It just makes for a constantly revolving cast of characters who all have the same disabling conditions: poverty, substance abuse, homelessness, mental illness and more. It would be nice if all the members of our society were able to take care of themselves, but the world doesn’t work that way. And with the state and federal government defunding social service programs at a record pace, it is left to communities like ours to find solutions. I don't know the answer, but I do know that shipping our unwanted and unloved citizens somewhere else will get us nowhere.
Tim Goncharoff
Santa Cruz
Keep Your Balls to Yourself
Yesterday afternoon at Its Beach, the off-leash dog area at Lighthouse Field State Beach just west of the Surfing Museum, someone dropped off about two dozen brand-new tennis balls “for the dogs to play with.” (I am quoting two people who witnessed it.) While this was a seemingly generous and well-meaning act, in reality it was actually the equivalent of littering. Had someone not removed those balls from the beach (as I did), most if not all of them would have washed out to sea at high tide. The likelihood is high they would then become part of the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre, a floating garbage patch that has been estimated to cover twice as much area as the state of Texas. Or they might have contributed to the deaths of the more than one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles annually who fatally ingest or are strangled by ocean-borne trash, especially plastics.
Obviously the person who left these balls at the beach had the best of intentions, but they did not think through the process and its inevitable results. I visit this stretch of beach with my dog three or four times a week and invariably find one or more tennis balls abandoned in the sand (I have found as many as seven in one day, along with plastic beach toys, Frisbees, rubber sandals, even items of clothing). I’ve seen people play ball with their dog and then walk away, leaving the ball in the sand. When I ask them, they tell me they found the ball and are leaving it for “the next person to enjoy.” Again, good intentions, but misguided.
Save Our Shores has recently mounted a community-based effort called “Beachkeepers” that encourages people who use our local beaches to help keep them clean and to inventory and log the trash they pick up.
Andrew Beierle
Santa Cruz
