Time for a few year-end Gilroy Crusader awards, so let’s begin
with the
”
You Got It Right
”
award. The winner is Dispatch letter writer Darick Nordstrom,
who in his recent letter hits the nail squarely on the head of the
pro-casino backers, sharing a traditional Native American story
about a young Indian brave and a rattlesnake.
Time for a few year-end Gilroy Crusader awards, so let’s begin with the “You Got It Right” award. The winner is Dispatch letter writer Darick Nordstrom, who in his recent letter hits the nail squarely on the head of the pro-casino backers, sharing a traditional Native American story about a young Indian brave and a rattlesnake.
I’m going to briefly repeat the story because the analogy that Darick applies is appropriate. Upon climbing a high mountain, a young brave comes upon a rattlesnake that begs him to take the snake with him back to the valley, lest the snake die from the cold mountain climate.
The brave reminds the snake that “you bite and kill with your poisonous fangs” but the clever snake persuades the Indian that he will be treated differently. The good-natured Indian succumbs to the snake’s plea, and finally upon placing the snake on the ground in the valley, is bitten as the snake strikes him embedding its fangs into his flesh. The brave recoils, screaming out in pain: “how could you?” And the snake replies: “you knew what I was when you picked me up!”
In this case, the Indian brave is likened to the people of South Valley, and the snake is likened to the Miwok casino interests.
Mr. Nordstrom continues with a valid question regarding casinos, “who else could take so much of your money, give so little back, yet have you thanking them and coming back to give more?” The answer is – nobody. He concludes, “It won’t be any different for us. Once they bite, there is no recourse. Let’s be wiser than the young brave and just say ‘no.'” And I’ll say a big “Amen” to that conclusion, no matter what the pro-casino folks feed us.
My “Due Diligence” award goes to Gilroy City Councilman Craig Gartman. Craig has really taken the details of the Hecker Pass Specific Plan seriously enough to diligently pursue clarification and answers to a number of his concerns about the plan proposal, which will provide development guidelines for the entire 423-acre Hecker Pass project area. Because Gartman questioned language in the proposal he believed would enable developers to replace smaller, more-affordable homes with bigger lots – contrary to the stated goal of mixed housing, this apparently became the incentive for the rest of council, as The Dispatch wrote on Nov. 24, to “prune out aspects [of the proposed plan] they see as a threat to the rural character of the area.”
Now while it would be nice for the Hecker Pass area to stay as rural as possible, reality is that Gilroy is continuing to grow and the market forces of growth are clashing even with the scenic character of the Hecker Pass corridor.
But it appears that the type of establishments that make up most of the common corner mini-malls here in Gilroy will be, thank goodness, banned from expanding into Hecker Pass. And that’s got to be good news for all of us who think we’ve already got too many of these eyesores in Gilroy.
Finally the recipient of my “I Need Sensitivity Training” award is local sixth-grade Brownell social studies teacher Joanne Lewis. By now most Dispatch readers must be aware of the hot water Ms. Lewis got herself into with her reading of a questionable poem to her class of 11-year-old students.
Now if Ms. Lewis was freshly graduated, maybe her action could be better understood, but for
an experienced teacher who is supposed to know the ropes of being sensitive to hot button no-no classroom topics like politics, religion, and sex, Ms. Lewis’ action is certainly disappointing.
It reminds me of a story about a nobleman of years past interviewing carriage drivers. “How close can you drive along the edge of a cliff and not fall?” he asked three prospective drivers. “I can come within one foot” answered the first. “I can come within six inches” said the second. While the third answered, “I’d stay as far away from the edge as possible.” The third man was hired. Ms. Lewis should have displayed the same kind of wisdom and stayed away from the poetic edge as far as possible.
