Unrequited love
Re: “City can you tax my car” (5/31/2018): Oh, ex-mayor Dave, how sheltered and safe a life you must lead? There are enough marginal older folks like me who can barely just afford to “stay” in their homes due to taxation (yes, good quality of life), let alone pay for tripling water prices, really!
Parking on the street and paying always is a moral obligation? I say tax the builders of all those skyline-obscuring high rises and yes Mr. Dave, some people can’t afford a car but have one for minimum wage work. I know people with full-time jobs who sleep in their cars; yes, there are people sleeping near the railroad tracks on the near west side. Our eyes should be open but sometimes it takes a turn of misfortune to get “woke up.”
Some of us just want to stay in our homes, maybe die there in the garden next to the big old tree under the stars? Tired of so many oughts and obligations to a place that sometimes does not return my love and admiration.
— Sandra Saul (via email)
A tale of Two Madisons
Re: “Eye of the beholder” (5/31/2018): Once a year I return to Madison, and once a year I note how much the city changes. The neighborhoods on the isthmus are slowly being chewed up by development, tearing down homes and replacing them with Disney-esque newer versions of what once was. Part of what makes Madison special are its neighborhoods and its human-scale architecture in its public spaces. Building this on State Street is an abomination — leave the street as it is.
— Ro Rosenkranz (via Facebook)
Please, Madison, be the progressive place you claim to be and move forward into the future.
— David Rodriguez (via Facebook)
Same old
Re: “The wrong me too” (6/12/18): Does former Mayor Cieslewicz have ANYTHING to say besides “liberals today are bad?” The city’s leftist voting block removed him from office nearly a decade ago, yet to my memory he’s yet to write a single column for this paper that wasn’t his same old complaint wedged into a new framework. The pretzel logic used to make his usual case against “today’s Democratic Party” in this piece was tortuous.
— John Estey (via Facebook)
It’s a fair point to say that victims with more money/status get more attention, but this classism isn’t solely the problem of leftist politics.
— Jane Wright Jones (via Facebook)
A quiet farewell
Re: “Escape from Madison” (6/7/18): I don’t blame [Andrea Johnson] one bit. I hope she’s able to find the peace she deserves.
— Linda Ladwig (via Facebook)