Letters to the Editor

We miss him, too: It is a wonderful article Matt Smith wrote about my dear friend, Joe Dignan ["I Wish I'd Written That," July 12]. Through the article, I could vividly see Joe talking to Matt as if the whole incident were playing right in front of my eyes.

Joe had that Italian bike since he was 16, a gift from his parents that he cherished and used all his life. He often seemed intimidating to others because of his strong and assertive voice and persona, but Joe was in fact a very sentimental and kindhearted person. We worked together saving St. Brigid Church for the past 12 years. We miss him dearly.

S.M. Wong

San Francisco

Resistance is futile: Martin Kuz's article about the overabundance (and redundancy) of the myriad protests in the city ["No Peace, No Justice ... Whatever," July 12] was well written, but avoided a few key facets.

Clearly, not only are many protesters aging hippies, but the younger ones tend to be rather poorly informed and looking for a "party." Moreover, the "young bloods" who have an intellect and who have not been completely brainwashed by their aging hippie college professors, may have, in fact, realized that many protests are simply an aggregation of disgruntled losers and neo-socialists who are either unqualified or too lazy to get a life, so they distract themselves with whining about things they barely comprehend. This makes them feel so very important.

Matt Mitguard San Francisco

Resistance is fertile: So what's the alternative? Granted, S.F. has lots of protests, but people do pay attention and someone learns something that they didn't know before. Is the alternative just to shut up and go along with the landlord-realtor-developer program à la New Times corporate? Did you ever stop to think that people might be fed up with your centrist crap? You people always bait the left, fine, but what solutions do you have to offer except the same stale Clintonian formula? California über alles airheadism, let's chill out, ad nauseam. So far protests have saved Mumia's life and have brought the Palestinian plight to public attention. Too bad your shitty little "reporter" is bored! Ask me if I give a good goddamn about that.

Michael Hardesty

Oakland

Pamphleteering for a better tomorrow: Martin Kuz's article about protests achieving a point of saturation is very much to the point, but possibly you are not realizing why it is so. Protests appeal to the emotions. They impress by the numbers of persons participating. I suggest that, if those persons were to write down their ideas and pass them around, they would be appealing to reason.

I do not like crowds. They take on a force or mind of their own, and are open to suggestions on the spur of the moment. People who participate in protests are hoping to have an effect just by their presence. This is not to say there is not a need to protest at many times, for the effect it will have on leaders and opinion-makers.

While my wife has gone out on protests, I have handed out leaflets for over 50 years. I have developed a whole rationale for it. I have written a book about pamphleteering, which will include a long bibliography. I suggest I am holding meetings on street corners, one persona at a time, hardly even being noticed by the powers that be. I think the people I communicate with will use my ideas in their own ways to influence public policies.

There are long-term implications of these two forms of communication: Do we want one based on widespread protests, or on people who take the time to put out their ideas for everyone to read and consider? We probably need both, but in the long run, written statements, in the form of letters or pamphlets, influence policy more.

Charles Smith

Berkeley

Our timbers are shivered: As one of the over 340 artists, technicians, and programmers who worked on the special effects for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, I have to either yell at or thank Robert Wilonsky for the "Fool's Gold" article [July 5].

In the article Wilonsky writes, "Bill Nighy ... obscured beneath pounds of prosthetics." You will need to print a retraction and apology about this false statement. What you are seeing on the screen is 100 percent computer-generated. I'm not sure where he got his information about the making of this film, but he is incorrect about the effects.

As for whether we should thank Wilonsky for his wrong article, it does give many of us great pleasure to know we have achieved such realism in our craft to make a viewer think it was makeup.

Anonymous

San Francisco

Corny humor:Nice job on [Katy St. Clair's] recent Bouncer piece about genocide and popcorn [July 5]. That was one of the best juxtapositions I've ever experienced — Rwandan machete mass massacre and that bow-tied weird old duck Orville Redenbacher. I'll never look at Rwanda, nor popcorn, the same again.

Matthew Pamatmat Cotati, CA