LETTERS LETTERS (July 14, 2004)

Grateful Sequoia Hospital will stay where it is

Editor:

Having considered Sequoia "our" hospital for as long as 30 years, and as relatively frequent patients there, we were delighted and consoled to read that the hospital will remain in its present location.

For every service, we have enjoyed competence and comfort rendered by all the staff. They are to be commended for retaining their professionalism and concern in times of stress.

One aspect of Sequoia is rarely spoken of but indicates one of the many reasons we find it so familial. The original planners of the hospital recognized the therapeutic quality not only of the care given, but of the site chosen: in a residential neighborhood and commanding views that are inspiring to all who work and are cared for at Sequoia.

Phyllis F. Dorset
Sherman Way, Menlo Park

Set better policy, but don't stop drilling

Editor:

Regarding the Northern Exposure article in the June 30 issue: With respect to ANWR, I say drill it! We also should be setting new federal mileage standards for cars, and funding and creating a national fuel cell development program, ala the space race of the 1960s. Decisions like this could provide a sound energy policy for the USA.

The hysteria expressed by environmentalists is beyond comprehension. Few are aware that the oil in ANWR could be harvested with a developed infrastructure footprint of less than 100 acres (sans access roads). The actual drilling site would encompass an area hardly larger than a Westridge home site (three acres).

Environmentalists incite the worst fears of the ignorant, always recalling the spills of the past. No reasonable person can excuse the mistakes made in Prince Williams Sound or off the Santa Barbara coast, but technology has made many leaps forward in the last 40 years. Slant drilling could allow us to harvest oil in the Santa Barbara channel by drilling on land, not in the channel. The same technology holds true for ANWR. Yet through petty partisan squabbling we insist on remaining dependent on foreign oil.

As for the estimates of oil locked in ANWR, why do the environmentalist get a free pass when they independently insist there is but 3.2 billion barrels in the reserve, when experts in the Department of the Interior place the reserves at two to five times that amount.

Let's move forward, by setting a workable national policy on energy production and use. Let's question the agenda of radical environmentalists. Let's place practical rules on the harvesting of oil in ANWR. Let's get out from under the thumb of mid-East potentates.

Richard Jordan
Paloma Road, Portola Valley

Thanks for walk down memory lane

Editor:

What a wonderful surprise to get my Almanac (July 7) and see a picture of my old friend Jim Tennant on the cover! When I looked at the notes, I realized that you didn't know who this wonderful man was. He was a civil engineer with the topographic division of the USGS, and had a great sense of humor.

I grew up as a "USGS brat," because my father, A. Dale Schultz, was a project engineer with the Topographic division. He loved his job. Our family of four moved every six months, more or less, to go on to the next field survey job. We traveled south in the winter and north in the summer, within the Western Division.

In 1946 or 47, shortly after I was born, my father hired Jim and his friend "Buster" Buzz Brown on as rod men when he was assigned a job in Prineville Oregon. It was shortly after they had both been discharged from military service. They were both so good at their jobs that the survey kept them on and they traveled with our family. Jim and Buster were my favorite babysitters, as well as excellent surveyors. It wasn't long before Jim became a topographic engineer, too, and was out on jobs of his own. He got married to Margaret and had two daughters, Valerie and Molly. Sadly, he passed away about 10 years ago of lung cancer. His sidekick "Buster" is a retired topographic engineer, living with his wife back in Prineville, Oregon.

Thank you for that wonderful walk down memory lane! I sent copies of the article to my mom (my dad passed away five years ago) and to Buster. They enjoyed it, too!

Carol Schultz
Pope Street, Menlo Park

Decision to move PV Town Hall applauded

Editor:

The move to move the Portola Valley Town Hall complex is reasonable, desirable and should move forward expeditiously to completion. Few individuals understand the enormous destructive power of a large earthquake at a lithosphere plate boundary, which exists beneath the valley of the San Andreas Fault in Portola Valley. As certain as the sun will rise tomorrow a large-magnitude event will be visited upon the San Francisco Peninsula. The municipality that is best prepared will have acknowledged the future, prepare accordingly, and will have a relatively intact administrative structure following an event, one that is able to deal effectively with the ensuing chaos.

The farther we are from the last Earthquake, the nearer we are to the next.
—Bailey Willis, late professor of geology, Stanford University

Robert Zatkin
Geologist, Redwood City

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