Letters to the Editor

Mail letters to Letters, Santa Fe Reporter, PO Box 2306, Santa Fe NM 87504, deliver them to 132 E. Marcy St., fax them to 988-5348, e-mail them to editor@sfreporter.com, or use our online form.

  BAN ALL VEHICLES?  

W Perry apologizes for calling all of you extremists who want to ban motorcycles and ATVs from all national forest roads [Letters,

and

]. I didn't know I represented all darkness and evil in the universe for proposing that while certain areas should be off-limits to motorized vehicles, other areas should be open to vehicles, including motorcycles and ATVs.

I abhor the kind of bad behavior accounted by readers, like scaring horses and cutting through fences to ride across other people's land. I would stop this kind of bad behavior if I could. What's the solution? It's behavior we're talking about. Teenagers go out in pickups, have beer parties and screw up the environment. Vehicles should be licensed to ensure legal spark arrestors. Families should be involved with kids.

But to ban one class of motor vehicles from national forest land, you would have to ban all motor vehicles from all roads including your pickups, SUVs and jeeps that take you to your favorite hiking, camping and hunting spots.

Is banning all motor vehicles on all roads in all national forests too extreme? I have to go now and trade in my 3,000-pound motorcycle that gets 45 mpg for a 5,000-pound SUV that gets 12 mpg so all of you will approve of me.

  WAKE UP CALL  

Oil and gas extraction in Santa Fe County and off-highway vehicles in our national forests are really two faces of the same issue:

The petroleum industry and its subsidiary private interests, for profit and pleasure, hoping to further exploit our irreplaceable high desert and mountain environment.

Our forests and rangelands are the soul of Santa Fe. Their very existence nourishes the wild in each of us. Even if we only appreciate them from a distance, they are a big part of the reason you and I choose to live here.

So wake up sleepers! The same mentality that sold us the Iraq war now has a detailed marketing plan for both the Galisteo Basin and the Santa Fe National Forest.

The only thing that will stop all this is a VERY loud public outcry, and we all need to work together. If each and every one of us does not make time in our busy lives to become part of the resistance, then our shimmering rangelands will surely become a forest of oil rigs, and our beautiful forest a freeway.

  BE A GUEST  

Re: "Over the Rainbow" [

] by David Alire Garcia. I am not a resident of RainbowVision. I'm a guest member. As a guest member, I've been able to take excellent fitness classes, use the top-of-the-line equipment at the Billie Jean King Fitness Center and Spa and dine out alone and with my guests at the fine on-site restaurant, Garbo's.

Although I am not a member of the GLBT community, I've been very graciously accepted and included and enjoy the sense of community I feel there. I would recommend a guest membership to anyone who enjoys the diversity our city offers.

  'GRINGOLANDIA'  

In November 1980, my father intentionally killed himself with a shotgun. Recently I viewed the Tiger Lillies' graphics depicting bloodied band members with pistols to their heads [

: "Sensitive Topic"]. This profound artwork allowed me to remember my father and that love. I'm OK.

Life will always present us with road kill. We choose to rage against potentially disturbing scenes or to embrace them.

In St. Peter's there rests a quietly powerful sculpture of Mary embracing the limp and broken body of her murdered son, Jesus. Michelangelo's "Pieta" is one of humankind's penultimate art masterpieces.

Shall we censor art containing pain-producing potential? Run from it? Where does that lead? The emancipation within the Tiger Lillies' suicide art is its clear message that "Gringolandia"* is not the idyllic Utopia contrived by mass media corporate consumer product advertisers.

Many of our people choose to kill themselves because our culture is obsessed with greed, drugs, violence, guns, materialism, ego and denial.

Fascistly, we may prohibit images of dark realities as does our Regime by suppressing photos of blood flooded Iraqi war scenes.

If we choose not to acknowledge dark truths, we will suffer.

The Reporter welcomes original, signed letters to the editor. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. They may be edited for clarity and space. Please include address and phone number for verification purposes; these will not be published.

Santa Fe Reporter