Wal-Mart

Group will continue fighting the retail giant

The Wal-Mart gorilla hasn’t yet eaten the grassroots Citizens for a Better Mill Creek. The Citizens have continued to inform the community about the reasons for opposing construction of a Wal-Mart store at 132nd Street and 39th Avenue, in the area recently annexed into Mill Creek: the long history of poor labor practices, the negative impacts on the environment, especially traffic, noise, and storm water, the unfair pricing policies which destroy small businesses, and the burden on taxpayers who must provide public assistance for Wal-Mart workers.

Citizens are not impressed by Wal-Mart’s minor cosmetic image-changing moves on health care and community donations. They have collected more than 4,000 signatures of Snohomish County residents who oppose the construction of a store in Mill Creek and are establishing a new web site, stopmillcreekwalmart.org. When they wave signs near the site, often on cold, wet, and windy days, there is overwhelming positive response from passing traffic. Many wrote letters, attended and testified at numerous hearings before a Snohomish County hearing examiner. They are now preparing for the next and perhaps final hearings on April 19 at 3000 Rockefeller Ave. in Everett. A decision will be made on a building permit 15 days afterward.

If the hearing examiner decides in favor of Wal-Mart, the Citizens have Plan B: a series of ordinances for the Mill Creek City Council, similar to those which were passed in many other communities and successfully stopped the Wal-Mart march.

The grassroots Citizens of Mill Creek not only have reasons and plans for the gorilla. They have hope, passion, and perseverance. Maybe the gorilla will look at all this and go away.

SELMA BONHAM

Mill Creek

Theater reviews

Write-up was full of narrow-minded views

I would like to ask Dale Burrows, writer of the “Odd Couple” review if he actually saw the show and if he actually knows any women?

If I were to base my answers solely on the April 7 review, they would both be “no.”

I have never read a more chauvinistic review in my entire life. Who actually uses the term “Chatty Cathys” anymore? “The talk is gossip,” in the first act, he says. Since when is reminiscing about the past, worrying about how late Florence is, and asking Vera where she’s going on vacation considered gossip? The only explanation I can find for this is that he thinks a woman is gossiping every time she opens her mouth. It’s not as if the guys in the male version of the Odd Couple play cards silently. There’s plenty of loose talk, joking, and jibing when they get together, just as there is when women get together.

I don’t know what men he was talking to, but the ones I know weren’t checking their watches. And I have some pretty honest male friends.

He also doesn’t know much about the play itself. He calls the female version of the Odd Couple a “spin-off and a makeover of the Neil Simon comedy classic.” Had he done his homework, he would know that Neil Simon himself rewrote the original Odd Couple for women. When the play was run as a revival on Broadway in 1986, Simon re-wrote it for female characters, with Rita Moreno and Sally Struthers in the lead roles. It’s not as if the folks at the Edge defaced Simon’s testosterone-laced classic out of some quirky desire to see more women on stage. They’re using the script Simon himself wrote.

It seems that Mr. Burrows suffers from the same delusion that so many other small-time critics suffer from: you think the only way to be a good critic is to be snide and self-important. The way to be a good critic is to be objective and observant, and above all else, to leave your Cro-Magnon notions of the female sex at the door.

ALLISON SCHUMACHER

Seattle

Edmonds

Park land purchase would be a savvy buy

As we demonstrated with the purchase of Marina Beach Park, municipal borrowing to pay for parks is an astute financial move in Washington State. Not only will the state provide grants at the time of the purchase, but, if the transaction is properly structured, the state allows the city to apply again and again in subsequent years for additional grant funding.

Even without such grant programs in place, park acquisition is perhaps the best reason for a municipality to borrow money. Land not immediately acquired is inevitably lost, and, unlike borrowing to fix a pothole, repair a building, or purchase a vehicle, the city can be certain that the life of the asset purchased (land for a park) will exceed the term of the bond.

In looking at the purchase of Sherwood Park, Edmonds citizens have the added benefit that the money stays in the family so to speak. Rather than purchasing from some out-of-state corporation, the grant money from the state of Washington would actually wind up in the hands of the Edmonds School District. Excellent.

LORA PETSO

Edmonds