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A really good 'neck of the woods'
Among the comments on the mayor's security detail (Feedback, January 15) was one troubling question: "Have any of you guys ever been to her neck of the woods?"
From our home on the east end of downtown, my wife and I frequently travel to that neck of the woods. I feel compelled to react strongly to that type of verbal redlining of the part of the northeast off of Clifford Avenue.
Recently we have eaten at restaurants on Culver Road and Parsells. My wife attends church on Culver and buys pastries at Savoia Bakery. Former students and colleagues live on Bedford, Longview, Ellison, Greeley, Vermont, Rocket, and Hazelwood. City featured a positive column of a house on Ferris Street.
On the way to and from senior softball leagues in Irondequoit, I always drive down Webster, Bay, and Clifford in the summer and fall. As a Democratic committeeman, and in a New York State Assembly primary, I have walked the streets of that neighborhood frequently.
So enough with the loose slanders about the diverse Beechwood neighborhood – Zip code 14609, mostly – which has a lot to recommend it. Take a look and patronize a business in that neck of the woods.
JAMES KRAUS
Time to act on the environment
A coal-washing facility is built right on the banks of a river that supplies over a quarter of a million people with drinking water. A frackwater impoundment in the watershed supplying Pittsburgh collapses, sending 400,000 gallons of fracking waste into the city's drinking water, and an entire city is on bottled water for three months.
Enbridge Energy is operating a tar-sands pipeline under the Mackinac Straits in the Great Lakes, water supply to millions. Inergy corporation is seeking dumping permits for an industrial facility to liquefy natural gas on Seneca Lake, water supply for over 100,000.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to promise it will not allow fracking operations around Canadice and Hemlock Lakes – our water supply. The DEC has permitted the dumping of radioactive fracking solids from Pennsylvania in the Genesee watershed.
Charleston, West Virginia, is coming to you. Imagine no water, no cooking, no bathing, no laundry, no drinking water except for bottled water – if you can get it.
What does it take to get you to act? We are in a fight with the fossil fuel industry for our lives. There are over a hundred organizations in New York working to convert our state to renewable energy and defend our right to clean water. They could use your money, and they could use you.
Your children, friends, and family look to you for protection. Get up. Get moving.
JOHN KASTNER
