Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for Jan. 26, 2025

Remembering beloved Mill Valley musician

I would like to add to the legacy described in Paul Liberatore’s recently published commentary on the late Austin de Lone (“Friends, family pay tribute to beloved Marin musician Austin de Lone,” Jan. 17). He was a beloved Mill Valley musician.

As co-chair of the Milley Awards here in Mill Valley, I remember the night in 2007 when we honored him with the Milley Award for musical arts. Receiving the bronze statuette at the event, he cited the pleasure of being recognized by his home town.

He will be dearly missed for his wonderful music and his extraordinary generosity to others.

— Abby Wasserman, Mill Valley

Remembering a kindness by former President Carter

I enjoyed Dick Spotswood’s recent column about Jimmy Carter’s 1975 visit to the Bay Area (“Jimmy Carter stood in my tiny apartment and spoke with focus,” Jan. 15).

Much has been said about the late president’s role as a humanitarian since his recent passing, and I recalled yet another example of his kindheartedness.

In October of 1978, I was visiting friends in Minnesota. We were heading into a restaurant for brunch one morning when we saw a big blue-and-white aircraft passing overhead, apparently inbound to the Minneapolis airport. Although two of us were air traffic controllers, we didn’t recognize the airline.

But that evening, local news reported that President Carter had arrived in Minneapolis to pick up Hubert Humphrey, the ailing senator and former vice president. Carter gave him a lift back to Washington, D.C., on Air Force One for the senator’s final session in Congress.

The identity of the blue-and-white aircraft was revealed, and I was touched by Carter’s kindness toward the former unsuccessful candidate for president.

— Steve O’Keefe, Novato

Too much public funding to support agriculture

For how long and for how much have public dollars been underpinning unsustainable agriculture in West Marin? It’s time for local and federal governments to determine the exact number and make some realistic cuts.

The fact that the Nature Conservancy nonprofit organization had to parachute in with checkbooks to bail out what I believe were unsustainable dairy ranches in Point Reyes National Seashore in a recently announced deal doesn’t make me feel much better (“Point Reyes ranchers, National Park Service, environmentalists reach agreement on disputed land,” Jan. 10). I think it is time to ask what’s left of the West Marin agriculture community to support itself or go somewhere where agriculture is sustainable and more worthy of support.

— Rand Knox, San Rafael

Don’t blame Democrats for Los Angeles wildfires

I feel compelled to respond to James Quigley’s letter published Jan. 19 expressing frustration about the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles.

I would first like to express my deepest sympathies for the loss of his brother’s home in Pacific Palisades. That situation seemed to be the catalyst for his letter, in which he blames Gov. Gavin Newsom, President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for this tragedy. In doing so, it seems he would rather find a scapegoat to rail against than to understand the larger forces that created L.A.’s inferno.

There is simply no refuting that the burning of fossil fuels has led to the rise in ocean temperatures that are exacerbating the extreme weather trends and certainly had a hand in creating the 100 mph winds that drove the L.A. fires into the inferno they became.

Blaming Democrats for this is beyond incongruous in so many ways. Democrats have been the only major party in America to try and confront the dangers of fossil-fuel reliance. It is the incoming Republican administration’s plan to increase the use of fossil fuels, even as all evidence points to the dangers of doing so.

The same thing that happened in Los Angeles can happen here in Marin. It is no coincidence that a headline of a recent IJ front page was quoting Marin’s fire authorities advising us of that fact (“Marin disaster planners see LA fires as warning,” Jan. 19). Instead of blaming the Democrats for policies that some believe caused these fires, I suggest we all spend our energies hardening our homes and attending to flammable landscaping.

There is nothing that the incoming administration is planning that will ameliorate this real threat in any way. On the contrary, it seems as if their policies will just accelerate the threats some inexplicably blame Democrats for.

— Mark Silowitz, Novato