Around the gilroy horn on politics, tattoos in the high school
yearbook and a kudos for an inspiring story
Mayoral candidate thanks people of Gilroy for their votes, support
Dear Editor,
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I want to thank the many people of Gilroy who cast their votes for me in Tuesday’s mayoral election. It was the closet election for mayor that I can remember in Gilroy history. We brought forward the issues we thought were important and made sure they were openly discussed.
Your support was outstanding and I feel very honored to have received so many votes.
Tomorrow is another day and with the three new council members joining us, I feel we will take your message forward in the coming years.
Again, thank you for your votes and support.
Craig Gartman, Gilroy
Wonderful and inspirational story on the young disabled shaping up
Dear Editor,
I wanted to take a moment and commend the Dispatch for such an inspirational story about the disabled young people exercising and getting healthy.
The staff writer, Christopher Quirk, did a wonderful job telling the story. The photos were beautiful. Me and my family struggle with weight issues. This story has gotten us moving.
Thank you!
Tom Filice, Gilroy
From a ‘narrow-minded bigot’ on the days before tattoos were art
Dear Editor,
“If you can’t stand the heat of the oven, then get out of the kitchen.”
~ Harry Truman, U.S. President
I got some heat over my letter to the editor concerning tattoos at the Gilroy High School. Andrea vanDeren and Julie Robinson take me to task, implying I am living in the past (1946). They invite me to come into the modern age, 2007, where tattoos are art.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized living in 1946 wasn’t such a bad time after all.
In that day, tattoos were taboo. They were quiet times – no drive-by shootings, no school massacres, no gun injuries, though we all had guns – rifles for shooting rabbits, squirrels or pigeons, and we ate the game! No guns were ever brought to school; all teachers were safe and sane.
Come to think about it, there were few or no teenage pregnancies. There were no birth control pills nor condoms offered by the school nurse. We practiced abstinence through fear of pregnancy or venereal disease. We also had a deep moral commitment – get a girl pregnant and you marry her. Her dad had a white shotgun handy, should the father of the child get cold feet at the altar. There was no welfare to support her nor provision for a television or cell phone so that she might continue schooling and place her baby in a government-supported childcare center.
In those old-fashioned days of the 1940s, the number of babies born out of wedlock was only three or four out of a thousand live births. Today, in this modern world Ms. vanDeren advocates, there are over a 127 babies born out of wedlock per 1,000 births. This establishes a nice foundation for a stable family.
We youths of the 1940s were really deprived of some of the finer things in life. We had no computers or televisions or websites for viewing pornography. To we students, the only pornography available to us was a Frenchman in a trench coat with a slouched hat who whispered to us “Pssst, want to see some dirty French postcards showing nudes?”.
Abortion? It, too, was taboo. So you readers can readily see how dull life was during those days of the 1940s compared to the days of 2007 when tattoos are art.
I’m sorry, folks, but I must admit that I’m a narrow-minded old and crotchety bigot.
J. McCormack, Gilroy
The Golden Quill is awarded occasionally for a well-written letter.
