RAY CHEERS

In a recent article, [Raymond Napolitano ] wrote about many peoples’ desire to open a restaurant because they throw a good dinner party. Not knowing the intricacies of the business, they are doomed to fail. I have an old saying: My Mom made great tuna noodle casserole so I think I will open a restaurant.

There are other particulars in the restaurant business. Many of the local publications and many media outlets, such as the food channel, glorify the food industry. The reality is it is very difficult to succeed in this industry and not enough credit goes to the underpaid and overworked people that make up the staffs of most of the restaurants we all go to and eat at.—Robin Sachs | Carmel Valley

SIDELINED NO MORE

I was on the sidelines moving the chains during a [recent] football game and was surprised at the behavior of a couple of the coaching staff.

Apparently they found an insulting note in their locker room before the game so they used it to motivate their players. A win meant a likely spot in the playoffs for either team. So, initially, I thought their players were simply fired up. As their lead widened , the coach was still spurring the players on with comments like “Punish them, guys,” and “Payback time,” I knew something was amiss.

After I heard the coach swearing over a call on a play I said, “Coach, you’re winning 60 to 7, what’s going on?” Another responded, “You should have read the note we found in the locker room before the game. It wasn’t very Christian.”

Students are learning valuable lessons on the playing field. It doesn’t matter if they are Christian, Hindu, Muslem or atheist. If we think that having one faith or another automatically makes us better behaved, we’re mistaken. As teachers, parents, and coaches, it is our job to mentor students in civil behavior that reflects a basic respect for people no matter the nationality, faith or school affiliation. —James Mazerik | Salinas

STOP, IN THE NAME OF SANITY

What happened to my youngest son in 2002 in Pacific Grove is perhaps one of the most salient examples of an arrogant, out-of-control city government . The street we lived on at the time had no stop signs or other means of traffic control for several blocks between the two major parallel avenues that our street intersected. Our street was the only such street out of 16 other streets parallel to ours. So our street was used as a speedway short cut for other PG residents.

With a neighbor, I acquired the signatures of every resident on our street and we petitioned the city of PG to install stop signs on our street to protect the many children. The good old boys of PG’s city government refused to install stop signs on our street, in spite of the warnings I gave them that someday a kid would be hit by a speeding car. Little could I have imagined that it would be my own youngest son who would be hit and almost killed.

Even as my son lay in ICU at CHOMP, the city government would not install stop signs. Even after we sued the city of PG and won, those unconscionable fools would not install stop signs. Because stop signs and the labor to install them are already factored into the city’s budget, it would not have cost PG one dime. Instead they took a hard-ass position that ended up costing the taxpayers of PG thousands of dollars to settle our lawsuit. —Jeffrey Van Middlebrook | Pacific Grove

PARDON MY PARTISANSHIP

Because a politician disagrees with presidential policy, does he/she have the right to slander?

Democratic partisan politicians, broadcast, and print media, have been slandering the president for more than six years.

The electorate should not return to office slandering politicians! Partisan Democrats of today are elitist, anti-traditional secularists, dictating to the world, “What I feel, what I say, IS.”

These liberal Democratic policies have marginalized California’s public school and college systems, its courts, police, fire departments and its medical delivery systems.

Questions to be asked to leading political candidates: Do you have a strategy to stop/mitigate high-profile partisan Democrats who will lie and slander you, while the media supports and expands their slander? What strategy do you have to resolve/mitigate liberal Democrat judges who legislate from the bench and who are enforcing open U.S. Borders? —Tom Irons | Moss Landing