San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
No badge of freedom
When did not social distancing and not wearing masks become badges of individual freedom? When did it become acceptable to think, let alone say, that sacrificing 100,000 lives was a small price to pay to restart the economy? When did it become acceptable to play a game at one of the major colleges whereby the first one at a party to get the coronavirus won a prize? Have we lost what remains of our collective mind, the very conscience, if not the soul, of this great nation?
Please, please give us a leader who can restore our sense of moral authority.
Ian Mitroff, Berkeley
Lack of maintenance
Regarding “S.F. schools: Equipment, staff insufficient to get all students back Aug. 17” (Front Page, July 8): Jill Tucker’s piece on the unpreparedness of the San Francisco public schools to open is very disheartening. She mentions such things as the shortage of custodians, entire buildings where windows don’t open and the lack of critical supplies. None of this surprises me.
I moved to San Francisco in 1992. That fall, I took an evening City College of San Francisco course at Everett Middle School. I remember being appalled by the lack of maintenance in the boys restroom. Some years later, I volunteered at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. The school actually had bake sales in order to purchase supplies.
It appears to me that the citizens of San Francisco do not consider funding public education very seriously.
Fireworks out of control
I’m having trouble understanding what went on in the Bay Area on July Fourth. Fireworks are part of the holiday, but what happened on Saturday was new. It was fullscale bombs, a far cry from sparklers.
I live in the hills with a view of the area, and the sheer number of huge explosions was unprecedented. Hundreds of M80 firecrackers and larger going off every minute for hour upon hour.
Is our collective psychosis so advanced that a display of explosions rivaling any war in history is our only solution to COVID19 and shelterinplace? I felt as if a monster was unleashed that became a speciesnumbing answer to something of which we have no
GOOD WEEK
control. If this is our response to a malevolent virus, what comes next? God help us all!
So many battles to fight
So according to “Trump deepens cultural divides on day of unity” (Nation, July 5), our agitator in chief thinks he is in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators and the looters? Oh, that must explain why he’s been unable to defeat a coronavirus that has affected over 2.8 million Americans and killed 130,000 of them. He’s too busy with other battles, as well as planning a museum with monuments to heroes. I wonder whether he’ll insist that one of the statues be of himself.
Don’t split the vote
Regarding “Referendum on Trump” (Letters, July 6): Please do not allow a third party to nominate a goldfish to run against President Trump. We cannot risk splitting the vote.