The demon-haunted world
EDITOR: What possible objections could citizens have to not keeping the four letter word “love” alive 24/7, 365 days a year? What objections? (“Poll: Should Sonoma Keep the ‘Love’ Sculpture?” Jan. 18).
Now we come to the critical part of this concept, Jason. It’s the horrendous, grotesque sculpture upon a 5-foot pedestal that is the basis for a 10-foot quadra demon that had the power to viciously kill under the water, on the surface of the water, on the land and in the sky! There is no joke about a flying dragon.
The Sonoma Valley High School students are exposed to this image over a thousand times during their education at this institution that is objectively failing and hurting the students with stultifying overwork that is not only causing them to be near the bottom academically upon standardized testing but is ruining their adolescence.
These young students need to have fun because they sense that the adult world is not ethical.
Jason, if we don’t bring up the quadra demon in the courtyard of our high school, of these kids whose frontal brain cells are still growing we will have failed!
Joel Taylor
Sonoma
No country for old men
EDITOR: I was very happy to see the reports of John Lasseter getting back to work at Skydance (“Lasseter to Lead Skydance Animation,” Jan. 11). I’m a full-on feminist, and I am very grateful for the #MeToo movement that called him out. But I have to say, there is also a time and place for forgiveness and a large scale of degrees from which to judge transgressions.
Being in the same community, I’ve watched Nancy and John Lasseter raise a family of fine children, and be extremely generous with so many local needs, Jack London State Historic Park, for one. On a global scale, the joy and love that his vision has brought to the world is so huge as to be unquantifiable. The world still needs his gifts.
So long as the people affected feel justice has been served and they are still advancing in their careers, Mr. Lasseter doesn’t deserve perpetual exile. The very public humiliation for doing things that he probably thought was “being fun,” while instead he was actually creating a toxic work environment, is something he has to live with. Hopefully, through this experience he “got woke” and will have grown in his empathy and understanding and respect.
President Trump said young men have to live in fear now, but he got it wrong. It’s the young men who get it and would never treat co-workers that way. It’s the older men that need to wake up and examine their behaviors, and I’m heartened that as a society that process is happening.
Anne Petersen
Sonoma
I’ve got a wall he can have!
EDITOR: I am freaking sick and tired of the idiot’s stupid wall! A wall that would be completely worthless, a wall that would tax our people millions of unnecessary dollars, a wall that the majority of our people (including both houses of Congress) and even the people on the border don’t want. The shutdown because of this wall is costing our country millions a day and thousands of our citizens their very livelihood all because of this mentally unstable person’s bloody bloated oversized ego.
