I’ve got a feeling (about Mintie White School’s trees)
To the Editor,
Last week I saw the two remaining large trees fronting Mintie White School with a large “X” painted on them and wondered what that was for? I knew the answer, but wondered anyway. Maybe it would not be for that? Maybe they were marked for something else? Would they mark them if they were planning to save them? No other trees were around.
I also noticed the old fence around Mintie White was removed, and a taller one was installed, with sharp bobbed wire at the top. “It’s going to look like a prison,” I thought.
I recall around the time of the recent heavy rains all the trees on the California Street side of Mintie White were chopped down, my guess being they interfered with power lines, and were a danger to students. I had noticed a large limb of one tree had suddenly broken during the volatile wind and rain of the period. For decades those oak trees were there, and one day they were just gone.
Now the two remaining large trees fronting Mintie White School are being taken out. I imagine for a good reason determined by administrators and city officials. I do not like living trees being chopped down. Those two trees I know are places where nests thrived throughout the years. I noticed that by the nest protectors shadowing my head as I walked by.
I remember in first grade, during a heavy rain, taking cover under one of those trees. I asked a lady if she could give me a ride to Notre Dame school a few blocks down. She did, she was worried about me. My mother had sent me walking to school that morning because my father was in the hospital. Then it began to pour.
We all have nostalgic and sentimental feelings about certain things. In the last 10 or so years many of Mintie White’s trees and two vintage playgrounds have been removed. Now the tallest of the trees are going so our internet, electricity and safety won’t be compromised. I’m not a tree hugger, but don’t like living trees being chopped down. They could’ve just cut off the suspected weak limbs and creatively worked the electric lines around the trees.
Charles Birimisa
Watsonville
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People before the Pentagon
To the Editor,
While members of the Republican majority are competing to see who can make the deepest cuts, there is a budget proposal before Congress that would boost the economy for all of us while cutting the number of people in poverty in half. It’s The People’s Budget, proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The People’s Budget invests in safe and productive infrastructure, education, affordable housing, health care and nutrition, child care and working family tax credits. It calls for increasing the minimum wage.
These investments will create 3.6 million jobs, and set us on a path to cut poverty in half in 10 years. The People’s Budget invests $2 trillion in infrastructure spending, expanding rural broadband, universal Pre-K and free college tuition at state and community colleges.
Every year without fail our elected representatives give over half of the discretionary budget to the Pentagon, leaving less than half to be divided up to fund education, healthcare, environmental spending, infrastructure and everything else.
Richard Gallo
Santa Cruz
