Letters

Letters may be edited for clarity and length. E-mail to le*****@oc******.com, or send to Letters to the Editor, c/o OC Weekly, 1666 N. Main St., Ste. 500, Santa Ana, CA 92701. Or fax to (714) 550-5908.

MOX ROX

[Regarding R. Scott Moxley's Feb. 9 story “Illegaly Park-ed,” which reports that a former officer avoided criminal liability for his undisputed sexual encounter with a motorist.]

Damn good article. If men were men, this would be one of those times that they would find this jerkoff and take him out behind the woodshed and beat the living shit out of him

Bob Minarik
Rochester, IN

OF WETBACKS AND MEN

Regarding the wetback story [Nick Schou's “'We Love Hunting Wetbacks,'” Feb. 22]: if it were a white guy who had been pulled over and roughed up by the police in Costa Mesa, no one would give a darn. Remember the white girls in Long Beach who were beat up and the black kids walked? Give the appeal-to-pity stories a rest. The guy has a lawyer. The L.A. Times never discusses white people unless it is in reference to how we have short changed or ignored the plight of the poor Mexican minority. Give us all a break—the Mexican wetback has become the majority.
Pat
Via e-mail

Let's not forget that Mansoor is nothing but H. Millard's puppet. The ironic thing about it is that Mansoor is half Egyptian and half Swedish. Millard should be damming Mansoor's Swedish mother to eternal Perdition for dumping her Nordic genes into a racial sewer. But racism, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.
Howard
Via e-mail

WELL, THANKS

[The following letters are in response to R. Scott Moxley's Feb. 19 story, “Hate, Inc.,” which reports on Ronald Lee Bray's racially-motivated assaults on a disabled African-American man and a Nicaraguan-American man during separate incidents.]

Really sad story. Yet while I'm not shooting for a history lesson for you, as a skinhead I have to tell you true skinheads are not Nazis or racist. These are boneheads, who give the likes of me a bad reputation (I'm openly skinhead). The skinheads' inception had a HUGE push from a black man named Desmond Decker. You have the resources to quickly verify this. I think it's hilarious that this inbred screamed out, “OC Skinheads, mother fucker.” It is almost excusable because he IS ignorant and pathetic—the guy is an unemployed vinyl window installer. You, unfortunately, have no excuse. I'll keep reading your articles with vigor. You do good work.
Rich
Buenos Aires

So you think PEN1 makes the Klan seem downright homey, homie? Has PEN1 lynched thousands of blacks and Mexicans? PEN1 is nothing more than a bunch of tweakers with small dicks who don't know anything about being white.
Glenn
Orange

TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL

So I was already was a bit sour about Will Swaim leaving the paper, but after reaching the back page to read one of my favorite writers, my Thursday night went into the toilet. I cannot believe Rebecca is leaving. I loved her column and looked forward to it every week. She and others at the paper brought sanity to those of us living in this ultra conservative mad county. I know I counted on the Weekly and Rebecca to expose the wrongs and right the rights of the goings-on in OC. I live in Huntington Beach, a half block from the ocean, and that sea breeze can keep the smog away but it can't make the stench of corruption blow away in my town or the county. Rebecca and the Weekly have been able to make that stink blow away. I have fought hard to spread the word and keep guys like Joe Carchio out of office and it is a real uphill battle, but having Rebecca and the Weekly on my side made it all worth the fight. I will dearly miss Rebecca not only crushing all the crooked politicians and real Orange County housewives but also her exploits out on the town. I loved reading every one of her columns. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Rebecca. I will miss you dearly.
Brian Leyba
Huntington Beach

LISTEN, THE SNOW IS FALLING
The Southern California Mountains have nearly always been short of natural snow for skiing and that's why we have had to rely heavily on man-made snow to operate our business that has provided literally millions of skiers and boarders a pleasurable experience. With our new and additional low-emission, energy-efficient snowmaking equipment, we can now virtually guarantee skiable snow will cover the ski runs of our Big Bear resorts all winter long. Call it denial, but I believe we will continue to do so for many years to come, regardless of any natural snowfall trend.

[

In Mr. Brian [sic] Coker's article [Matt Coker's “An Inconvenient Slope,” Feb. 15] his obvious contempt for my views about radical environmentalism and my skepticism about certain aspects of the global warming debate (and there is much to debate) appears to have negatively colored his opinion, not only of me personally and Big Bear Mountain Resort's snowmaking efforts, but of the very future of Big Bear as a viable winter recreation destination. I can find no other explanation for his cynical characterizations of me and our snowmaking dependent business . . . unless it was the cold eggs. . . .

 

 

First, I did not blame the media for the fact that many people in Southern California don't realize how much snow we can make or how good it can be. I only said I wish we could get more help from it to get the word out—this season being a case in point.

 

There are too many other errors and distortions in his article for me to respond in detail, but I will comment on his central theme–and belief in–declining natural snowfall in Southern California. I repeat my earlier comment that, no, I don't believe we've seen such a decline in the nearly 60 years I've been on the scene, the last 42 of which has been in ski area management. And now I'll elaborate. For most of the '50's we were in a drought, with hardly any natural snow. Big Bear Lake was nearly empty and Snow Summit would have gone out of business without the introduction of snowmaking here in the early '60's. We continued to be short of natural snow for many seasons in the '60's and '70's and relied, as now, on snowmaking to survive (now, actually, we can prosper). There was a natural snow drought in the entire west from 1976 to 1978 in which Snow Summit did great on man-made snow while other resorts were closed, or nearly so. There was another snow drought in the mid '80's to early '90's in California that forced Mammoth and other Sierra resorts to put in snowmaking systems.  Conversely, we have had a number of wet, snowy winters over the years, including recent ones in'98 and '05.  As Sheila Hamilton at the MWD noted,
the Big Bear Lake's low/full cycle has historically been about 10 years, a reflection of both rain and snow precipitation. 

I would add that I estimate that at least half of our winter precipitation over the decades has fallen as rain. I have vivid memories of huge, intense rain storms commonly occurring since I was a child, called the “pineapple express,” from Hawaii.  Warm winter weather in Southern California in the form of heat waves and rain in the mountains has been an integral part of our business experience from its inception. (Coker repeatedly confuses the issues of drought with that of snowfall; that is, precipitation with that of temperatures.)

In our snowmaking world, cold air is more important than natural snowfall, and as far as winter temperatures go, we make snow nearly every time it's cold enough and we have not seen a decrease in the number of hours each season available for it, which has averaged about 1100 hours since the middle '60's. This might be the strongest evidence (but not proof) that our average winter mountain temperatures are not warming.

All this, of course, is anecdotal, but there is some actual snowfall data. Take a look at the Western Regional Climate Center's monthly total snowfall (in inches) for Big Bear Lake for every year since the 1960-61 season, (www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMONtsnf.pl?cabibe)  (There are some missing day's and month's snowfall measurements, but they would only add to the total.)  We have plotted the data on a graph and added a 5 year moving average trend line, which indicates a trend of decreasing snowfall from the mid '60's through the '70's, an increase from then up through the mid '90's and then a decrease in the past 10 years.  (Remember, this is only for Big Bear, not all of California.)  We also added a linear trend line for the entire 46 year period, which shows a slight upward trend as well as a polynomial line that shows an increase through the period until about the mid '90's and a slight decrease since then.  You can interpret these trend lines anyway you want, but no one could conclude there is a long term trend one way or another of the annual amount of natural snowfall in Big Bear.
[The data we've linked to and Mr. Kun refers was faxed, emailed and snail-mailed to us, also.]

[

Matt Coker responds: My story began with me asking Dick Kun whether he follows natural snowfall trends. He answered with an emphatic no. Now he sends this letter and faxes me reams of data that show he follows these trends intimately. That's what I assumed when I asked him about it, and I would have incorporated this new information had he provided it in the first place. As it was, I went out of my way to make sure everything he and his staff told me about snowfall, snowmaking and global warming were in my story, which must be among the most comprehensive stories ever printed about Big Bear Mountain Resort's truly impressive snowmaking operations. As for errors and distortions, I did not say Kun is in denial, a Big Bear environmentalist did. I called Kun a pragmatic businessman. Based on his obvious misreading of my story, perhaps that was an error and distortion. If so, I apologize.

Just a minor correction for Matt Coker's piece about Southern California's snow business. The bears encountered by the first Europeans to visit today's Big Bear were not “black bears,” but rather the subspecies Ursus arctos Californicus, the now-extinct California grizzly immortalized on the state's flag. While less dramatic, Snow Summit owner Richard Kun and other winter resort operators are following in the explorers' footsteps in their single-minded pursuit of profit at the expense of wildlife.

I encountered the same attitude last year when I asked Paul Bauer of Wrightwood's Mountain High ski resort if he thought climate change would impact local skiers and boarders. Bauer, the resort's Director of Environmental Affairs, suggested that I read Michael Crichton's State of Fear (the 2004 novel that suggests global warming is a bunch of hot air). In the end, it's understandable that Kun, Bauer and others become animated when the topic is raised. Big Bear and Wrightwood sit at relative low altitudes, and no amount of snowmaking is going to save these businesses if temperatures follow accepted projections over the next 30 to 50 years. Other ski areas in Colorado and California are in the vanguard, educating the public about the disturbing effects we are already seeing. Climate change is real, it's here and it's an arrow aimed directly at Southern California's most temperature-dependent businesses.

MUCH MORE THAN A PRETTY FACE!

Thank you for putting into words so well the majestic allure of one HB council member Debbie Cook in your “OC's Sexiest People” [“Sexy Sexies!,” Feb. 8] article. When I watch city council meetings on HBTV 3 her hyper-smarts give me a secure feeling knowing she's representing the interests of HB. Her powerful wealth of knowledge and professionalism should have been enough to intimidate foul bunts like Joe Carchio from even running. I simply hope for the sake of the future of HB politics that the world renowned M.I.L.F. hunter doesn't pick up her scent. Peak oil? Yeah . . . peak somethin' . . . eh? Am I right? Eh? (Beat) Never mind.

LINGUISTIC WONDERMENT

Ah, la ignorancia de estos gringos! Let me tell you something about Mexican nicknames [Gustavo Arellano's “Ask a Mexican!” Feb. 1]. It is not strictly a Mexican phenomenon, nor is it an attempt by local natives and mestizos to get back at the Spanish masters by way of “defiantly infiltrating the invaders' Spanish language with Nahuatl” as that burro professor from East Los Angeles Community College told that unsuspecting tonto. All of Latin America uses nicknames.