Viet Community Wants Little Saigon

We would like to thank Erin for her article about the hot issue Little Saigon of San Jose in these days ("New Power Generation," Cover, Oct. 31). We also would like to inform you that her article has been captured as a cached file in our database and may be translated into Vietnamese in the very near future. Although her article is not perfect as that she was not at the meeting with us on Aug. 15, 2007, at Tully Library to know that "the uproar" that Madison called "crazy" was obviously because of Madison's attitude to the community: her regardless and angry attitude towards the calm and sympathetic community that once voted her for a councilmember, but could not bear itself after hearing her saying that the biggest input for the name of the Business District would be decided by those who live or do business in the area within 1,000 feet on that stretch of Story Road, not by anybody else!

Ironically, very few of them (two or three) were present at the meeting, and those who were at the meeting agreed with the name Little Saigon! Madison clearly lost her control when the name Vietnamese Business District that she herself designated was not welcomed by the community.

We loved Madison once; however, she's only one of thousands of Viet community members that can share our support to the second country and all communities around us that give us the shelter while still representing our Viet background identity as the political refugees.

Once again, thank you and Erin very much for a good article about us. We hope to have more of Erin's articles about us, and we always welcome Erin to any of our Viet community meetings in the days to come if you want to have more valuable reports for your readers.

Hoang Hoa

Tiengdan Weekly

San Jose

Luis In My Life

Re: interview with Luis Valdez by Richard von Busack (Arts, Nov. 7).

Thanks for your interview with Luis Valdez. I remember my Mom taking me to support the United Farm Workers' march to the capital from Delano and seeing Luis Valdez's Teatro perform for the first time at night outdoors at the edge of Sacramento when in high school. Much later, Luis Valdez's Teatro group performed in the Twin Cities, Minn., and I saw them again in a theater auditorium. In 1998, at the Gathering of Indigenous Women of Anahuac in Mexico, I celebrated my new fire ceremony turning 52 years old and placed the treasured Teatro souvenir T-shirt into the sacred fire. I am 61 years old and value his performance work contributions over the years that mark my life stages.

Sylvia Lemus Sharma, Ph.D.

St. Paul, Minn.

Kill Pests, Not Yourself

Re: Squirt Gun Solution (News, Oct. 10). How to kill pests without killing yourself or the earth...

There are about 50 to 60 million insect species on earth—we have named only about 1 million and there are only about 1,000 pest species. Over 50 percent of these thousand pests are already resistant to our volatile, dangerous, synthetic pesticide poisons. We accidentally lose about 25,000 to 100,000 species of insects, plants and animals every year due to "man's footprint." But, after poisoning the entire world and contaminating every living thing for over 60 years with these dangerous and ineffective pesticide poisons we have not even controlled, much less eliminated, even one pest species and every year we use/misuse more and more pesticide poisons to try to "keep up"! Even with all of this expensive pollution we lose more and more crops and lives to these thousand pests every year.

We are losing the war against these thousand pests mainly because we insist on using only synthetic pesticide poisons and fertilizers. There has been a severe "knowledge drought"—a worldwide decline in agricultural R&D, especially in production research and safe, more effective pest control since the advent of synthetic pesticide poisons and fertilizers. Today we are like lemmings running to the sea insisting that is the "right way." The greatest challenge facing humanity this century is the necessity for us to double our global food production with less land, less water, less nutrients, less science, frequent droughts, more and more contamination and ever-increasing pest damage.

National Poison Prevention Week, March 18–24, 2007, was created to highlight the dangers of poisoning and how to prevent it. One study shows that about 70,000 children in the United States were involved in common household pesticide-related (acute) poisonings or exposures in 2004. At least two peer-reviewed studies have described associations between autism rates and pesticides (D'Amelio et al, 2005; Roberts EM et al, 2007 in EHP). It is estimated that 300,000 farm workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning each year in the United States. No one is checking chronic contamination.

In order to try to help "stem the tide," I have just finished rewriting my IPM encyclopedia entitled: "The Best Control II," that contains over 2,800 safe and far more effective alternatives to pesticide POISONS. This latest copyrighted work is about 1,800 pages in length and is now being updated at my new website at www.stephentvedten.com. This new website has been basically updated; all we have left to update is Chapter 39 and to renumber the pages. All of these copyrighted items are free for you to read and/or download. There is simply no need to poison yourself or your family or to have any pest problems.

Stephen L. Tvedten

Marne, Mich.

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