Letters to the Editor

Good News

As I was reading “The Amen Effect” by Rabbi and writer Sharon Brous recently and she wrote that her son Levi asked her a question as they walked to Shabbat services, “Ima, every day we are talking about all the bad news. When do we get to talk about the good news.” A question I sometimes ask as I walk to or from the Neighborhood Watch meetings at St. Luke’s or when I read the Beachcomber’s “Community Scanner.”

I shared the following experience with our Neighborhood Watch coordinator (South of Conant) and he recommended sending out my story through Nextdoor, but since I can’t handle any more electronic mail, I decided not to share it with the exception of a few friends and family as it arose in conversation. Then I read the “Poor Security” letter in your May 29 issue of Beachcomber. I had a totally different experience of my neighbors than Maria Palomera.

Last week as I was riding my bike home (I live between Woodruff and Bellflower north of Wardlow) from the El Dorado Park Nature Center, where I volunteer, I fell on the curb when my tire hit a muddy patch on the roadway on Wardlow. I was dazed and laying on my back on the curb.

Two other bicyclists stopped within a minute and asked me if I was alright, encouraged me to lay there for a minute, asked me if I hit my head and if I was dizzy, and then helped me to stand up when I felt ready.

About the time I stood up another person pulled over in his pickup truck. He said he was going the other way and saw me fall. He said he was a bicyclist and was happy to drive me home. He loaded up my bike and helped me into his truck and drove me home. When we arrived, he said he lived south of me and walked his dog by my home every day – an unknown south of Conant neighbor. In fact, I found three neighbors yesterday and all I can say is thank you.

I have abrasions and scratches on one elbow and knee and a few bruises, but nothing broken and even most of the soreness was gone by the morning after, which is a blessing for this 80-year-old this month. (I was wearing a helmet.)

Hugh Menton

Space Beach

A Long Beach-based job listing begins with “Space is a warfighting domain” Originally coined in 2021 by former Republican activist, then Democratic mayor, and now Congressman Robert Garcia, and now breathlessly hustled by current Mayor Rex Richardson, Space Beach is the latest in a long line of would-be identities for Long Beach – including the International City, the Aquatic Capital of America, Queen City, and Vibe City, to name a few – and is both one of the most toxic and certainly the most violent attempts to brand our brandless city.

Space Beach is not about wonder, curiosity, or science – it’s about war. Forget boldly going where no man has gone before, expanding new horizons, and hope for the future: space is now the new place to colonize and kill each other.

The near disaster of the chemical tank emergency at the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove illustrates what aerospace manufacturing includes: among other things, the storage of toxic chemicals that can both leak and explode. The Garden Grove incident evacuated some 50,000 citizens, and these are some of the same chemicals used in the same aerospace engineering that we are welcoming into Long Beach.

As of now, after the danger of a massive explosion has mostly passed, the residents of Garden Grove are being told not to worry about the toxic off gassing of the forthcoming site cleanup, only that they may notice a “fruity or plastic-like” fragrance!

Long Beach has been involved in war before, and in the manufacturing of killing machines – but the earthly possibilities for mass destruction are starting to seem so last century, so let’s take it to space and expand the killing fields. Is this who we are? It’s who Mayor Rex Richardson wants us to be, judging by his social media backslapping of Long Beach’s self-congratulatory complicity in the military industrial complex and Trump’s Space Force obsession.

Even Anduril Industries, the notorious MAGA-billionaire-owned military tech startup responsible for ACLU-criticized border surveillance and now building space-based interceptors for Trump’s Golden Dome pet project, was welcomed to Long Beach with the usual fawning enthusiasm from Richardson.

What happened to our beautiful city by the sea with seven miles of white, sandy beach? Is Space Beach going to be the big tourist attraction, or the reason people will flock to live in Long Beach? Or do we just strap on our helmets, pick up our weapons, launch our AI drones and get ready to blast off?

Sorry, aliens, if you were looking for intelligent life on earth, it sure ain’t here!

Merry Colvin

Bike Path

Please do not walk in the Shoreline Bike Path. There’s a pedestrian path for you to walk on. Do you know how many times I’ve seen parents have their kids running and they almost get hit by a bike? And look both ways before crossing. There’s a reason why it’s called “bike path.”

Shelby Morrow, via Nextdoor