Bring On the Train
In my opinion, it is truly awesome that we’re finally getting these architectural treasures back (“Your City’s Front Door,” May 26, 2011)—as functional improvements to our infrastructure!
I can’t wait to take the train from Springfield’s Union Station all over the Valley! Personally, I believe that this will be a great economic catalyst for our area, and a big lure for businesses and forward-thinking people looking to relocate, because of the area’s increased capacity for mobility, because of its increased unification as a region, and because of the revitalization of our cities.
This is a big step.
I hope that after rail, local politicians have the chutzpah to tackle the problems caused by the placement of I-91 in Springfield, i.e., amputating three Springfield neighborhoods, inhibiting development of Springfield’s most valuable property (the riverfront), and placing a physical barrier between Metro Center and Springfield’s biggest tourist attraction, the Basketball Hall of Fame. The current placement doesn’t make sense on a lot of levels. It’s time someone—other than academics at UMass—starts to write about it.
Justin Marsh
via Web
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Why Blame Banks?
With regard to Maureen Turner’s story “Fighting Foreclosure” (June 2, 2001): it’s telling that an article that uses the words “right” or “rights” about 10 times doesn’t use the word “responsibility” once. Do these homeowners have a responsibility to pay their mortgages? I guess not, because banks are evil.
Banks are so evil, in fact, that for the past 20 years they have been relaxing lending rules so that people could move into a house and start building equity. These changes were pushed by Fannie Mae to reduce down payments and offer sub-prime loans to people who would never be able to get a home with bad credit scores. Many people took advantage of the new rules to move into a new home; others tried to game the system by flipping houses. But everybody lost out when the market collapsed.
Bad things happen to people. Only the Advocate seems to believe that it leads to free or subsidized housing. And what’s the long-term upshot of No One Leaves’ efforts? Banks will return to their old practices of requiring high credit scores and 20 percent down payments, putting home ownership out of reach for even the most virtuous, yet poorer, Americans.
But then—good news!—five years from now the Advocate can run another story about those evil banks refusing to extend mortgages to low-income people. Win-win, baby!
I strongly urge you to read All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McLean, about the sub-prime mortgage crisis. As the title implies, there’s plenty of blame to go around, even for the homeowners.
Eric Lindholm
via Web
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Water Smart
We need to reduce impervious areas like parking lots and roof tops (see “Water: Too Little, Too Much,” June 2, 2011). The water that falls on these structures should go into the ground as close as possible to where it falls as rain, rather than going down a catch basin and being piped to our lakes and rivers.
There are many proven ways to decrease impervious areas. In parking areas, we can use “pervious paving” that allows the water to percolate through small holes in the pavement. For rooftop and parking lot runoff, we can create “rain gardens” and other bioretention areas to capture the stormwater and allow it to slowly percolate into the ground.
More and more, these techniques are being required on new construction, but they should be required as retrofits to large impervious areas as well.
Jane Winn, Executive Director
Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)
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The Ethics of Eating
Kudos to the Advocate for printing the letters (like “PETA: No to Meat,” May 26, 2011) that made it clear to those of us who eat animals and animal products that the animals in question are exploited for our benefit. However, it is also true that the production of row crops that are eaten by vegans entails the deaths of untold numbers of animals, albeit less cuddly ones, like rodents and insects.
And it is true that if none of us ate beef or pork, that would mean that cows and pigs would not live out their “normal” lifespans in fields of clover. There would be no domestic cows or pigs unless some were kept as pets or in zoos.
Finally, when we consider these ethical issues, we might remind ourselves that those of us who use electricity exploit the coal miners who suffer and die in its production. And those of us who have crossed the Brooklyn Bridge have exploited the workers who died in its construction. And so on.
Paul Cherulnik
Leeds
