Avoid the Pleasure Trap

Re "Help Veggie Go Vegan" (Silicon Veggie, Sept. 6): Thanks, Elisa, for your great story on your struggle to become vegan. Here are my suggestions:

1) You have already done a lot of the work by reading Meat Market. Now whenever you see cheese or are tempted by some dairy product, recall the suffering of the animals involved. Practice associating the cruel reality that you now understand with the food rather than just your taste sensation, and you will soon be able to let dairy products go.

2) Keep reading! I found that the more I know, the stronger becomes my resolve. Veganism is now very easy for me, whereas once it was difficult. Books like The China Study by Colin Campbell, The Pleasure Trap by Doug Lisle, Dominion by Matthew Scully—all these and many more will support your resolve. There are also fantastic websites such as vegsource.com and vrg.org that will give you facts not fads.

3) Take a cooking class! I am a cooking instructor for The Cancer Project, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes cancer prevention and survival through nutrition education and research. There are free classes in the San Francisco area for anyone who wants to prevent cancer. You will learn to make easy, delicious vegan meals and meet other folks who are learning, too. For more info go to www.cancerproject.org.

4) Attend the upcoming Healthy Lifestyle Expo in Burbank, Calif., Sept. 22-24. You will hear fantastic speakers such as Colin Campbell, Dr. John McDougall, John Robbins, Caldwell Esselstyn, and Dan Piraro (Bizarro cartoonist). You will come home fired up about all things vegan! Register at www.vegsource.com.

Hope these suggestions are helpful—I wish you all the best. Thank you for all you have done to help stop animal suffering through your writing.

Jean Myers, Yuma, Ariz.

Hold please? You bet!

I hear that the phone system in the new city hall is quite a fiasco, with callers suffering waits up to 45 minutes before they get connected to a real person. I suppose San Jose couldn't afford to put in a system that really works, having so recently spent $4 million on the great car race, including the $50,000 for the catered gig in the luxury sky box ("Dig In!," The Fly, Aug. 2). May I make a modest suggestion? To provide a small consolation to those of us ordinary people who didn't get invited to the sky box (that we paid for) why not just put the lap-by-lap commentary from the race on the phone system instead of Muzak or those incessant "Your call is important to us ..." messages? At 45 minutes wait for each attempt, a San Josean making two or three calls might well get a chance to hear the race in all its thrilling entirety.

RJ Miller, San Jose

About Time

Re "Unquestioned Answers" (Cover Story, Sept. 6). I am pleased to see an honest piece of journalism on David Ray Griffith and his views on 9/11. It surely is time to re-evaluate the events of 9/11.

Valerie Cutler, Providence, R.I.

RFO!

Re "Unquestioned Answers": Right fucking on!

Doug MacKenzie, Los Gatos

Your Mom Rules

Re Hellyer Park pic of Shawn Hatfield (Sports, Aug. 30): Thanks for using my son for your pic! I'm very happy and proud that he follows his heart and does what he's passionate about.

Patricia Marlowe, Ventura

Shawn, if you don't send your mom flowers right after you read this ... dude, lame.—Editor

Invincible Effort

Thank you for writing a brief, favorable mention of 1997's far-from-famous "traveling-America" book, Invincible Summer, in your publication (Letters, Aug. 2).

Even in a non-fiction effort, this book's author (Santa Clara native Dave D'Antonio) showed a great eye (and ear) for characterization, with which skill he laced his perfectly realized work's 36 vignettes. Bravo!

Dave Canfield, San Jose

Good Japanese Vs. Not-So-Good

Re "Clap Your Hands, Say Yume-Ya" (MetroMenu, March 8). Hi. I'm a Japanese from Japan who loves eating out and I happened to come across your article about Yume-Ya. I was really surprised to read a great article and you seem to know a lot about Japanese food. Some of my friends here cannot really tell the difference between good Japanese food and not-so-good Japanese food, but you seem different! I myself like Yume-Ya, too!

Loved your article and hope to see more reviews like this!

Kazumichi Shinohara, Cupertino

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