Setting the record straight
To the Editor,
As a long-time resident of the Freedom area of the Pajaro Valley, I keep reading that the new brew pub at the airport is going in a former hangar. The building was actually a maintenance or paint shop. Hangars are usually adjacent to the runways, where this location is across the street from the hangars and runways.
I am glad to see an original WWII building being refurbished, but wanted to set the record straight.
Al Iermini
Freedom
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How about an app for sweeping the floor and emptying the garbage?
To the Editor,
Recently I was sitting and reading in a coffeehouse, whose name will not be revealed to protect the innocent. At the beginning of my stay, the wooden coffee stirring stick I was using had fallen off the table on to the floor. I resolved to pick up the stick as I was leaving, but forgot to do so.
The next day I did not go to the same coffeehouse. The third day I did and sat at the same seat, and at some point during my stay, I noticed a wooden coffee stick around the same place it was when I was there two days ago. This time while leaving, I, again, forgot, to pick up the coffee stick. The next day I returned and sat at the same seat, and sure enough there was a coffee stick at the same spot. I was curious now, and decided at the end of my read I would not forget to pick up the coffee stick and along with my empty coffee cup deposit it in the garbage. This time I did not forget and I reached for the stick and took hold of it with my fingers, mumbling, “It can’t be, but who knows?”
As I brought the stick up, a string of cobweb came along with it. “This is the original coffee stick I dropped three days ago. I can’t believe it and I can believe it,” I mused. And after all this one hard fact glared — the coffeehouse floor had not been swept in at least three days. I shook my head.
Some time later I thought about a passage in a Vincent Bugliosi book about his doubts there was a “complex” conspiracy with regards to the JFK assassination: “But the massive conspiracy envisioned by most conspiracy theorists necessarily would be extremely complex, and this fact is greatly exacerbated by the ineptitude of human beings. I’m talking about the staggering incompetence at every level of our society, one that normally prevents any group, large or small, including the U.S. government and its agencies, from performing at anywhere near optimum capacity. Indeed, on a scale of one to 10, they normally operate below five. Incompetence is so widely prevalent that I expect it, and when I find competence I am always pleasantly surprised.”
In the last decade, as our economy has suffered, businesses have cut back on services that were before a given. Overflowing garbage cans in front of businesses are commonplace. Buses leak and have inconsistent lighting and air conditioning. Public restrooms, as well as streets and sidewalks, are not as clean as they used to be.
Cleanliness and order has taken a back seat in the priority department. Tables at restaurants are left unbused for long periods of time. Silverware often appears half-washed (wrapped in a clean napkin) waiting for you at dinner tables. It goes on and on. So many public places resemble pig sties. One thing that our new techie-dominated world has not added is an improved app for sweeping a good floor and emptying a good garbage can.
Charles Birimisa
Watsonville
