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A child is more
than a pronoun
This letter is to correct Judy Balaguer. Judy, you made two mistakes in your letter to the editor in the April 7 edition. First mistake: People, born or unborn, are not referred to as "it."
"It" refers to a non-living thing! When you are speaking of a living, growing human being, that is when you use the words "he" or "she." Also, "him" or "her" can be used.
Second mistake: A man and woman who conceive a child are the parents-to-be of a CHILD. They are making a decision to kill or not to kill a whole separate, other person with an identity, a gender, a separate blood type, nerve endings with which to feel pain, a heart and a soul.
They are making a decision to ultimately kill another innocent person — a child. They are not making a decision for themselves solely.
I hope you now can realize how your mistake can lead to a horrific and tragic experience for many.
Jeff Walton
Holme Circle
Some advice for
the good doctor
I have good news for Dr. Robert Young, president of the Fox Chase Cancer Center, who recently said of his patients: "I don’t like to see them standing in the hallways to be seen."
Dr. Young, you can stop worrying. Parkview Hospital on Wyoming Avenue will reopen with a 400-bed cancer hospital later this year.
These people waiting in your hallways can’t wait for your 20-year expansion, nine-story parking garage and extra hospital beds. That’s too long to wait.
I hope I have helped Dr. Young and the many people he has scared about not enough cancer care.
Frank Neumann
President, Friends of Ryerss
Northeast Philly
needs help!!
After many happenings here in Northeast Philadelphia, I feel the need for this writing.
I was in Strawbridge’s at Cottman Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard a few weeks ago, and a salesperson was making a call to have someone clean up the dressing room, as somebody had defecated there. I was told this is something that happens quite often.
In January, cars in my neighborhood had the tires slashed. This included St. Vincent Street, Friendship Street and Princeton Avenue. There have been several occasions of arson in this vicinity. A car under a deck, trash put out for pickup, and a Dumpster. I understand there have been other incidents as well. Recently, automobiles on the same streets were vandalized with red spray paint.
What is happening to the Northeast? We need help before it’s too late to save our neighborhood. There are many seniors in this part of Philadelphia who cannot afford to move and better yet, don’t want to move. Can someone please help now?
Ruth DiCicco
Castor Gardens
Beware the man
in Mayfair
This is a very important warning to all parents who live in West Mayfair. On April 8 at approximately 9:30 to 10 p.m. at the corner of Hawthorne and Hellerman streets, three girls ages 12 and under were approached by a young man on an older model blue bike with a metal basket.
He asked them if they would like to make some money by telling him about or showing him their panties.
The girls were smart and knew to run and scream. A neighbor heard the girls and proceeded to grab the young man and hold him until the police came. That neighbor is now my hero, for he came to the aid of my daughter when she was in need. Unfortunately, the police could not hold the man on any charges due to the fact that he did not touch any of the girls. Fortunately he did not touch any of the girls.
This man is still on the loose. He is a 19-year-old white male who lives in the neighborhood and often is seen at the KB toy store in the Mayfair Shopping Center. Please tell your kids to be aware of him. Many thanks again to my neighbor, who did the right thing by helping someone else’s child. Thank you.
Kelly Sweeney
West Mayfair
What’s become
of Mayfair?
To Francis Daly (Letters to the Editor, April 7 edition), you must be blind or ignorant. Property values everywhere went up. Mayfair USED to be a great place to live. Now it’s simply another neighborhood in Philadelphia that’s going to the birds with increased violence, ignorant kids, North Philly implants (sorry to be redundant) and drug abuse.
When I was growing up, North Philly to me, started where the El started. Now, it’s from Cottman and Frankford down. Just driving up Frankford Avenue, the faces have changed to dirty, toothless Kenso welfare recipients, the trash of city.
I guess Mayor Street thought if he somehow spread the garbage out throughout the entire city, instead of having one concentrated area for it, no one would notice. He was wrong.
Pat Hill
Pennypack
Please support Bill 855
The firefighters of Local 22 are extremely proud of the neighbors getting together and fighting the city’s unsafe deployment plan.
The only way we can get this mayor to listen is with the public’s support. The money is a very small amount of the city budget.
We’ve been given the funds from City Council, which voted unanimously to restore the budget, but this administration still wants to deprive the citizens of protection that their tax dollars pay for.
Your properties and lives should not be used as a political game.
Right now, we have a bill, House Bill 855, in the state legislature to force the administration to do an impact study before they do wholesale cuts of your protection.
Please call your state representatives and tell them to back this bill. Thank you.
Bill Gault
Vice president, Local 22 Philadelphia Firefighters Union
It’s beginning to look
a lot like Detroit
In response to the letter to the editor in last week’s Northeast Times entitled And the answer is . . . John Perzel:
It would largely seem that the letter writer fails to realize that the intersection of Grant and the Boulevard is the MOST dangerous intersection in the country. In addition, they failed to see the MSN article dated April 12 in which Philadelphia is second in the country for car insurance rates.
That is correct — we pay more for car insurance than New York City and Los Angeles, and we are only behind Detroit. We have so many similarities to Detroit today that I call our once fine city Phila-troit.
As for the jobs, aren’t the Democrats currently under federal investigation? The Democrats in this city have been lining the Department of Recreation, the Housing Authority, the courts; there is in fact no city agency that does not have "gimme" jobs for political cronies.
I wonder what politician benefited from the demolition of the housing project towers downtown that is now home to luxury condominiums. Also, thanks to mismanagement, we have been the lucky beneficiary of the Section 8 homes for more years than I have been alive. We have politicians benefiting personally from land deals on the riverfront for casinos, and yet the letter writer is concerned for a new technology aimed at making the most dangerous intersection safer.
Just don’t blow the light and you will not get the fine. Moreover, wake up. You do not have to sniff too far to find the real self-serving politicians. They have bodyguards, for some strange reason, and they stink and have been in majority rule for about 40 years too long!
If you want to live in Detroit, just keep voting them in, and get the bars ready for the front of your windows.
Camille Capobianco
Tacony
Letter was insulting
to other communities
Regarding Walt F.’s letter to the editor in the April 7 edition:
Dear Walt F: That was a mighty bold claim you made in your open letter regarding the traffic light cameras at Grant Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard.
The idea that "they" (presumably every resident of West and North Philly and Germantown) drive without a license, registration and insurance is both groundless and insulting.
I see no need for mindlessly attacking three communities of people that have nothing to do with the decision to add traffic light cameras to your upper class intersection.
I have another, more simple answer to the question of why there are not traffic light cameras in West and North Philly and Germantown. Two of the three most dangerous intersections in the country are Grant and the Boulevard and Red Lion and the Boulevard. Neither of these intersections are in the communities you mentioned.
Perhaps if you trained your high horse to obey the traffic law, you wouldn’t have to worry about this extra "surtax" for living in the Northeast. And you can speak for yourself when you say that City Council is correct in assuming that we are stupid. Some of us recognize good sense when it smacks us in the face.
Christine O’Neill
Castor Gardens
He’s seeing red
on the street
I haven’t written a letter to the editor for quite some time now, but I couldn’t help myself after reading yet another article in our Northeast Times paper about the red light cameras taking over the Northeast while all areas of North and West Philly go unscathed by Big Brother.
The part of the article that caught my eye the most was the part about the Philadelphia Parking Authority opening a satellite office on Grant Avenue for paying your fines while the mayor continues his war against the Northeast with his planned closing of the mini-City Hall in the Northeast Shopping Center.
They can come up with money to open up a violations branch in the Northeast to pay your tickets, but they can’t do anything for senior citizens trying to take care of their business at the mini-City Hall. Where’s Red Light Rizzo when you really need him? Oh, that’s right. He’s hanging out with his crony Nutter planning their next big smoking ban bill.
As for John Perzel and his merry band of state reps, George Kenney and Dennis O’Brien, the No Turn on Red signs at various intersections in the Northeast pertain to you, just as they do the rest of us. You all stick out like a sore thumb with your special Pa. license plates as you make that all important No Turn on Red turn on red. So at least two of you that I’ve been behind in traffic are no better than the drivers going through red lights at Grant and the Boulevard are. Ever hear the term, "lead by example?"
I can hardly wait to see what happens in 2007, the year our local politicians have planned to dip ever deeper into our collective pockets by doubling or possibly tripling the already high real estate taxes we’re already paying for the lack of services we get in the Northeast. Don’t believe it? Visit the city’s BRT Web site to find out more. Weren’t the slots parlors supposed to lower our housing taxes?? Oh, that’s right, we live in Philadelphia. We don’t count.
Ted Lister
Millbrook
Thanks for doing
the right thing, Andy
I want to thank a person named Andy who found my wallet in a shopping strip at Grant Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard and drove to my house to return it.
I’m sorry that I wasn’t home to meet this very kind person. Andy, you have restored my faith in people!
Diane Powers
Academy Gardens
Don’t be fooled
by the Egyptian ambassador
Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the United States who recently visited Northeast Philadelphia, thought he could take a page from President Lincoln’s motto: "You can fool some of the people some of the time …"
While he may have fooled much of the audience with his efforts to obfuscate the truth about his nation’s efforts against peace, make wild accusations about Israel fomenting hatred and lull people into a false sense of hope, those who know the facts were not fooled.
Rather than delving into the authenticity of Fahmy’s claims, your reporter simply repeated them, furthering the ambassador’s attempt to mislead, rather than shedding light — a newspaper’s prime responsibility.
Here are some facts: The Arab-Palestinians have voted overwhelmingly in local elections for a party — Hamas — that openly and consistently calls for Israel’s destruction and targets Jewish civilians. The Israelis only target known terrorists.
While there may be "fringe elements among Israelis" who may "promote anger, demonization and violence," Israeli officials limit their activity and are quick to arrest its extremists.
Further, no matter how insistent Fahmy is that his government is committed to "stopping the flow of weapons to terrorists," the facts belie the claim.
Truth is, Egypt, with its iron-fist regime, could stop the illegal flow of deadly weapons into the hands of Arab-Palestinian terrorists at a moments notice, but clearly has no desire to. Rockets and guns smuggled into the Gaza Strip from Egypt are fired daily at Israeli towns.
Finally, of course Fahmy would stand up in a synagogue and reject anti-Semitism. Again, the facts play a different tune. In addition to the popular anti-Israel song and 41-part anti-Semitic television series in Egypt, the government-controlled press frequently has anti-Israel articles and cartoons that inflame the Egyptian population, explaining the popularity of the song and show, and accounting for a cold peace between the nations rather than a warm one.
Steve Feldman
Executive director, Greater Philadelphia District, Zionist Organization of America
What’s the matter
with these kids today?
In response to the Matthew Taylor shooting and murder, I am deeply sorry for the loss of your son and friend. It seems he was a victim in this case, and as a mother myself, I am saddened by his death. However, as the wife of a gun owner with a permit, I can say that myself and my husband have been victims of incidents involving drunken/high teens.
Once, while I was pregnant, we were nearly run off the road by a group of kids playing a game of "let’s chase the adults in their car on Saturday night."
We had no cell phone, and the kids were obviously drunk. They persisted until my husband finally lost them somehow, but you have no idea how scared I was for my life and my unborn child’s life. You were not there.
There is no way to gauge a group of kids; you can’t judge whether or not they have a weapon or may hurt you with a club or four or five of them against you. By the way, a group of drunken kids and a car equals a weapon.
Another time, we were nearly killed by a group of Northeast Catholic High School boys trying to jump us on our way home as we were quietly holding hands while coming back from a 7-Eleven. There was no way to get into the store without being approached and there was no one around to hear our pleas for help.
Such is life in this city. Look at the illegal gun use in the recent WOW shooting. Kids can be dangerous people; it means nothing that they are just kids. The ones in my incidents certainly didn’t care that I was carrying a child and was afraid, did they?
I, too, was underage when I had my first drinks. It happens, but we never went around looking for trouble or harassing people in any way — we were too busy hiding from our parents, who would have killed us if we went to a party like the one mentioned in the Taylor case, at Neshaminy Motor Inn.
Maybe kids need to respect adults a little more, or they should be the ones who walk away from trouble or insults more. Stay out of trouble and it won’t find you most of the time. The kids in the Matthew Taylor case didn’t belong at that motor inn. You can’t tell me they didn’t know it was trouble — I don’t believe that.
Matthew Taylor doesn’t belong dead, either. Where is the answer? In our case, I am happy with my husband’s decision to carry a gun. It’s rough out there. He is a responsible person and we are responsible parents. I want to stay alive.
I should mention that I would always exhaust all other options before using a weapon. In the 10 years that my husband has carried a gun legally, he has never discharged it.
My son is currently being stalked by a 13-year-old boy. You can’t tell me he isn’t dangerous; you should hear his filthy mouth and his threats. I can understand what it’s like to be on the side of not knowing what to do and wondering what is going to happen next.
Fear is a powerful emotion. Kids in numbers are powerful. If the guy in the Matthew Taylor case drove away, who’s to say none of those kids would have driven after him? And asking a store owner to call 911 is a joke. I have tried it once. They are afraid of large numbers of kids and fake calling to prevent retaliation, i.e., the 7-Eleven incident of firebombing after a store owner chased away drug dealing kids.
In short, sorry, but there is just no way to know what a bunch of kids will do to you. Maybe you as parents know them, but the guy being threatened doesn’t know them from the next kid.
And if they are drunk, in a group and out driving, and in a group that is threatening someone, whether there are good kids involved or not, that makes the person being threatened outnumbered and scared, and it makes the kids in question just as dangerous as any weapon.
Melanie Gordon
Lexington Park
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