Watsonville City Council continues to protect our coast
To the Editor,
At the Dec. 12 City Council meeting, following the pomp and circumstance of Mayor Oscar Rios passing the gavel onto to Mayor-elect Lowell Hurst, the council voted unanimously to pass a resolution opposing any new leases for oil, gas and/or mineral mining off the California Coast. With this action, Watsonville joins an increasing number of coastal cities and counties across the state who have passed similar resolutions to stand united and firm in opposition to President Trump and his anti-environmental cabal of Zinke, Ross, Perry and Pruitt.
Save Our Shores thanks the City Council for taking this action and for continuing to demonstrate environmental leadership. We applaud you, former Mayor Rios, for bringing the resolution forward and we applaud current Mayor Hurst, Mayor Pro Tempore Dutra and Councilmembers Hernandez, Garcia, Coffman-Gomez and Bilicich for voting yes to keep our shores clean, our habitats healthy and our waters alive and thriving.
Katherine O’Dea
Executive Director, Save Our Shores – Santa Cruz
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Appearance matters
To the Editor,
Worried about terrorists killing people? There aren’t that many out there. What we do have killing millions of Americans is people being overweight. It is not a question of “who are they?” like terrorists, they are seen everyday, everywhere. They are labelled with those nice words “obese” and “obesity.” There is great power in words. They should be called “fat” and “fatness.” These tell it like it is.
In our society, appearance matters. No one wants to be seen as “fat.” Doctors should help by telling patients they are fat, not obese. When people know that others see them as plain old “ugly” fat, we will see a big change in individual weight control (eating) and the health of Americans. A truly important side benefit will be the slow down in the escalating health costs.
Ray Gardner
Watsonville