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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Covering the Council
To the editor: I agree with your article on the District 5 race (“Power to the People?” April 25, 2007). East Fort Worth has been left behind in many ways.
I’m glad to see that others are talking about the need for more council districts. Eight districts for a city our size is ridiculous — we need to add at least two, and four would be even better. And now’s the time to do it, since the council will be moving into new chambers in the near future.
Thanks for writing about the race, since the Fort Worth Star-Telegram doesn’t seem interested in the subject at all!
Bernie Scheffler
Fort Worth
To the editor: Mayor Mike Moncrief has not bothered to show up for six public forums with Louis McBee or answer the hosting groups’ questionnaires. He sent his resumé, but the voters want answers! McBee “will guarantee a public vote on the use of city taxes for the Trinity Uptown,” and he supports a tax-rate reduction for the next two taxable years, just two of the things Moncrief won’t do.
The mayor has tried to intimidate Councilman Chuck Silcox (one of the good guys) and has stripped him of at least four chairmanships and given them to Jungus Jordan — his “yes man” for District 6.
Please vote. Support the good guys who want to save your taxes, not give them to big business and make developers rich. Vote for McBee for mayor, Clyde Picht for District 6, and Chuck Silcox for District 3.
Darlia Hobbs
Fort Worth
Is Money the Issue?
To the editor: “Mineral Rights Mania” (March 14, 2007) was a well-written story that seems to cover all of the bases except the viewpoint of us fossil-fuel-suckin’ gas-guzzlin’, future-be-damned fools who support the machinery that makes possible such irresponsible greed.
I grew more indignant as I read, and by the time I reached the part about one well right outside the perimeter of O. D. Wyatt Elementary School, I was spewing diesel. After the recent accidents in Forest Hills and Parker County, how can we allow this travesty to continue? Sounds like blood money to me. Is the problem really how Fort Worth is going to spend its share of the goodies?
Linda M. Lee
Fort Worth
Not the Problem
To the editor: The residents and merchants of Lancaster Avenue want the homeless problem to stop (“Not in Their Backyard,” April 18, 2007), but their solution attacks the victims and won’t do anything to solve the problem.
It’s convenient to believe that these people are just lazy. Our capitalist system (for which I am a success story) does not have a place for the mentally ill or severely IQ-deficient. You can’t put mentally ill people into the hell of prison for being poor and having nowhere else to go. WWJD? It’s far less expensive to get them the medication and counseling they need, and it’s also the right thing to do. It’s not going to make our capitalist system crumble, and it will save our city’s soul.
Sloan Clark
Fort Worth
Paddy Postdate
Editor’s note: This letter should have run in March. Fort Worth Weekly regrets the delay.
To the editors: More often than not, I vehemently disagree with the commentary in your paper, but never have I found myself so incensed as when I read, in Last Call, the “St. Paddy’s Day Survival Guide.”
In a contemporary American mind-set where superficiality is king and Western and Christian culture are regularly misinterpreted, it doesn’t surprise me to hear a celebration of a Christian saint and Irish history reduced to debauchery and drunkenness. Still, your review of local pubs, with its brazen claim to knowledge of several Fort Worth establishments, is shameful. Most grievous is your description of Ye Olde Bull & Bush. I think it must have been a drive-by review only.
One major error was referring to the patrons as hooligans. Not once in the pub’s eight years has anything more violent than cross words been exchanged between patrons, and the last soccer game available for viewing on the pub’s one tv screen was the World Cup. In fact, this pub is not Irish but English in character. In truth, the B&B is perhaps dodgy when compared to the plastic, commercial chain pub mentioned in the article. Regardless, the B&B is a warm, encouraging, safe environment fit for any patron — which is surely why it has been chosen “Best Pub” in seven of the last eight years in your “Best Of” issues.
A pub — short for public house — is an invention of those parts of the world influenced by the United Kingdom. What you will not typically find in a genuine pub is green beer, drunks on the floor, or fake décor. Pubs are as genuine as the people who visit them.
My last name may be Czech, but my mother’s side of the family was made up of Leahy, Douglas, and McQuillan blood. I and my peers, and fellow products of Irish culture, will continue to patronize the real thing. I hope your writer will find another calling and leave this one to those who can offer more informed commentary.
Jan Cermak
Fort Worth
Last Call responds: I solemnly regret daring to satirize a great people and will now flog myself with the strings of the Trinity College Harp.
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