Mailbox

O Letters

HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY? Send your thoughts to editor@bendsource.com.

Letters must be received by noon Friday for inclusion in the following week’s paper. Please limit letters to 250 words. Submission does not guarantee publication. Opinions printed here do not constitute an editorial endorsement of said opinions.

Letter of the week receives $5 to Palate!

MARKET OF CHOICE: MY MARKET OF CHOICE

Kudos to Bend’s Market of Choice for a memorable holiday gift and incomparable customer service. Arriving the Friday before Christmas after a grueling, 15-hour-long plane trip from the East Coast to visit family, I braved the grocery crowds to pick up my preordered brisket dinner for 20.

Had to share the back story, which I just heard from assistant manager Corbin Serano. An unexpected snow storm had stranded the truck carrying the meat. Thanks to Serano’s creative workaround, though, we feasted on brisket instead of hot dogs. Determined to fill my order, he reportedly was going to take meat from the display case and cook it himself. But he had an aha moment: enlisting the culinary acumen of the company’s artisan chef Greg Cabaze, on site to help with the holiday crush. Cabaze performed his magic. The result: best brisket ever, according to our lucky guests. Market of Choice… beyond the call of duty; definitely my market of choice!

—Lynn Lewis

EVERY OTHER FLUSH TO SAVE WATER

In addition to the City of Bend urging customers to be vigilant in conserving water used for their landscaping needs, perhaps it’s time we take it a step further and start looking at other ways we use water in our homes. One measure that comes to mind that is painless came about during the 2014 drought in California when Gov. Brown urged people to flush less to save water. The idea was to flush the toilet every other time one went to the bathroom as flushing does save water. Since then, it has been found, even if you have a highly water-efficient toilet that uses just 1.28 gallons per flush, that could still mean you'd save potentially 1,400 gallons of water a year if you only flushed every other time you peed (three fewer flushes a day, for 365 days).

The amount of water released by flushing varies widely from one toilet to another. Generally speaking, the older the toilet, the more water it uses. Toilets built before 1982 use 5 to 7 gallons per flush. Now, most toilets are designed to flush using only 1.6 gallons of water. So based on the assumption that the majority of people pee six or seven times a day, if you flushed every time and each flush used 1.6 gallons of water that could mean between 9.6 and 11.2 gallons of water a day just to flush (times the population of Bend!).

Toilet flushing accounts for about a third of household water usage.

—Jill Tinker

A ROSY PICTURE OF BEND

Permit me to comment on the rosy picture of Bend as printed in the January 1 Bulletin article by Suzanne Roig. I have lived in Bend 81 years and worked for a time at Brooks Scanlon. The mills provided an adequate living for many, although not comparable to the higher wages some businesses are able to provide today. A drive through the old mill housing district will show a cross section of the homes the mill workers lived in. They were not as large as many of the mega mansions in Bend today, but I never heard anyone complain. Compare them to the new homes on the east side, all lookalikes and barren of native trees and yards. I don’t know of anyone who thought of the mill sites as “gritty,” “barren” or a “blight.” The mills supported a large population and had a hospital for workers.

I recall that during my breaks, I would sit by the river and watch wildlife. I was not interrupted by thousands of tourists walking on the banks, or floating by. We have traded the mill pollution of bark chips and soot for hundreds of pounds of garbage that are removed from the river each year. We have traded a quiet mill town for one that is “vibrant” with over 15,000 visitors a day and terrible permanent traffic congestion. Most of the natural areas I enjoyed in my youth are paved.

I know the closed mills had to be replaced with a new economy. I never dreamed our leaders would exploit the natural beauty of the area by advocating relentless development and, in the process, destroy so much of what was good about Bend and making it unaffordable for many.

—Kyle Miller

THE OBSERVATIONAL TOOL

People. On. The. Street. POTS! How about… the unsheltered? Even naked and fearless, is better than HOMELESS. Can we remove the inanimate object out of this circumstance? Home. I live in a van. Shelter. No want or need of a home. SHELTER. That chunk of real estate aka the former Les Schwab on Franklin… perfect for a village for the unsheltered.

How about a way to create opportunities for those on the street to do, say, snow shoveling, in exchange for gift cards, prepaid credit cards, as a way for that misplaced job force to earn and grow.

So much is being done. I thank y’all. Think of what you could come up with.

—Alan McCarthy

Letter of the Week:

Just when you think the world is all going meta and digital and no one talks to you face-to-face anymore, people walk in off the street and hand you their hand-written letters about topics of importance in the community. Two of these letters this week – from Alan and Kyle – came to us that way. Thanks for your letters, guys! Alan, come on by for your gift card to Palate.

—Nicole Vulcan