Letters for November 29, 2001

Gut the guttermouth
I’m just a normal partier here in Chico with no big agenda except I don’t like the pigs and I do like reggae. I was put off by the crude verbiage used in Genetic Strands [Nov 21].

It is cheap and attracts attention by bringing things to the lowest level. It also degrades your publication by showing a lack of vocabulary. It doesn’t take a high-school education to use four-letter cuss words.

I know DNA from around town (the Senator, etc.) and his pitiful attempt at running for the City Council. It seems as though rejection/ humiliation is his “modus operandi.”

I read the CN&R weekly starting on Thursday for my entertainment needs and some general news and would hate to see it sink to the levels of some of the other “punk, rap or hip-hop” publications. There are plenty of those covered in barf in the gutters in front of the tattoo parlors.

I would hope with diligent thought you will reconsider publishing such simpleton and “guttermouth” scribblings in the future.

Scott Love
Chico

For the record
Plain and simple: The Esplanade League is repulsed by Supervisor [Kim] Yamaguchi’s efforts to force his Plan 5 redistricting plan into place. His blatant dismissal of due process is an egregious example of his lack of responsibility as an elected official.

Furthermore, The Esplanade League is adamant that the money spent on defending the legality of his efforts could be better spent on other, pressing county needs such as land-use planning and economic development.

Kris Zappettini
Spokesperson
The Esplanade League
Chico

Angels in the outs
I am happily married to an Enloe RN. She is an angel. Not only is she my sweet angel, patients and their relatives have often described her as an angel, too.

My wife has labored in several large hospitals, and the current staff of the unit she works in respects and likes her. So do her patients and their families.

My dedicated, hard-working RN wife does things you or I would probably cringe at. And she does them cheerfully, professionally and properly. She exhibits the epitome of quality patient care.

She returns from her 12-hour shift (up at 4:30 a.m., gone by 6, not home again ’til 8 p.m.), which totals about 14 hours away from home, tired, very tired. And things sometimes hurt, like her feet or her thumbs or her back. But she never complains. She cleans the blood, the urine or the splooge of the day off of her uniform, changes clothes, and joins me for an hour or so before she goes to bed in order to get up and do another 12-hour shift the next day.

So what’s the problem? I’ll tell you. I don’t believe that the hospital administrators can or do work as hard or as efficiently as ICU or CCU RNs. The suits don’t do the patient care and hard physical/mental work that the RNs do. As for the union contract, administration is stonewalling and misrepresenting and seems to savor frustrating the RNs until they leave and all that’s left is travelers at $40 an hour versus the $22 or $23 that they give to local, committed nurses like my angel.

The bottom line from my perspective is this: They seem to be purposely alienating them and nudging them toward leaving and signing on at other hospitals that demonstrate more care for their RN staff than Enloe does. And that sucks.

Joseph Morreale
via e-mail

Feminists should fight
The letter from Claudia King [“Let women do it,” Nov. 1] is the first time I’ve ever agreed with a feminist. She’s absolutely right—men have not found a way out of the violence and war that have been going on for thousands of years. Ms. King stated, “Women have the capacity to deal with violence and terrorism,” and I am certainly willing to give women the chance to prove themselves.

I propose that the card-carrying feminists in this country send a million feminists to Afghanistan to end the violence and unending war. Everybody who belongs to the National Organization for Women or subscribes to Ms. magazine, now is your big chance to prove your long-standing contentions. Now is the chance to put your money where your mouth is and finally accomplish something remarkable.

Thanks to Osama, airfares are real cheap right now. There’s no excuse not to be able to buy an airplane ticket to Afghanistan and do something for humanity. Can you imagine the look on the Taliban’s faces when a million hardcore feminists show up in Afghanistan? I’d pay money to see that. I would be especially interested to see what the feminists’ “nonviolent solution” is. Apparently women know a lot more than men; they’re just not willing to share the answers with us.

Michael M. Peters
Red Bluff

Nurses’ tactics misguided
I found Patricia Puterbaugh’s letter [“Sign the contract,” Nov. 15] concerning contract negotiations interesting. In making her point, she cites Kaiser’s recent increase in salary. I just spent the weekend with my friend who works for Kaiser in Hayward. She told me that they have 70 vacant positions they cannot fill, this in spite of an $80,000 annual salary. If they do not fill at least some of these positions, they will more than likely have to close beds.

Kaiser routinely uses registry and traveling nurses to fill in staffing. California Nurses Association represents Kaiser, and yet there are still huge gaps in staffing due to the nationwide nursing shortage. Ms. Puterbaugh mentions a $5,000 sign-on bonus; Enloe’s Web site offers up to an $8,500 sign-on bonus.

I can remember not so long ago when the nurses at Enloe were asking for staff supplementation any way they could get it—including registry and traveling nurses. Now that they have that help, they are complaining about the cost.

It seems to me that Enloe has no option but to plan ahead for the strike the California Nurses Association is threatening to implement. Patients will still need to be cared for. It is not as if these kinds of plans can be handled in a matter of hours. No one knows better than the Board of Trustees how expensive a strike would be for our community, not just in dollars, but in other ways as well. No one “wins” when nurses walk out on their patients. No amount of rhetoric changes the fact of what is essentially patient abandonment.

I agree with some of the issues the nurses are upset about. I just disagree with their method of solving them.

Chris Hall, RN
Chico

Chico’s Archie Bunker
I thought Archie Bunker was the only person who felt like Bill McCord [“Guns for all,” Letters, Oct. 25]. One of the episodes in All in the Family was about Archie getting on TV to present his idea about stopping hijacking. The editor previewed his presentation and could hardly believe his ears. He got the entire staff in to view the “last living dinosaur.” Archie wanted the airline to give everyone a gun when they got on the plane and collect them when they got off!

Wally Forsland
Oroville