Read the first letter to the Editor in today's Argus Courier on Page 8 (4/3/08). It's titled "West side has character" by Brian Way. I'm speechless. Am I reading that correctly, that his letter is filled with so much hatred???

Speechless!!?? - I am so furious, and disappointed that this person wrote such a vile letter.

I have lived on the East side for over 40 years. I know my neighbors, and talk to them when I am strolling around, as well as when they are strolling around our neighborhood. At one time, all of Petaluma was open space. And the the last time I looked, the bigger NEW homes were being built on the West, on open space on the hills.

I am so sick of the West side vs. the East side attitude. there is both good and bad about each side, but the bottom line is that we are ONE town.

I think Mr. Way owes the entire town of Petaluma an apology.

I live in the middle of town and I felt this was a divisive and polarizing letter which served no purpose. I love living in Petaluma- both sides.

ohsuzyq, you are a good writer. Why don't you pen a response letter to the Argus? Someone needs to point out Mr. Way's extreme spew of bitterness.

Brian is (sadly) a neighbor of mine. I am not shocked by his vile comments though.
Surely he needs to keep his mouth shut, but clearly that is not an easy thing for him to do.
He seems to thrive on hostility and conflict sometimes, even with his neighbors that he is 'friendly' with. I'm no Doctor but perhaps his current combination of prescriptions needs to be reassessed!
I am not shocked that he wrote that disgusting hate filled letter, I am shocked however that the Argus chose to print it as well.

I, too, found the letter to be offensive and not at all in the spirit of community we have in Petaluma -- ALL of Petaluma. But I am glad the paper printed it so we are aware that such an attitude is out there among some people!

For what it is worth, I think the letter to the Argus does reflect the divisive attitude of SOME--on both sides of town. I was going to ignore it but I have decided to post a blog on the subject next Wednesday. Now, all I have to do is compose it!

I'm just so glad he is not my neighbor! And unfortunately his neighbors will now see him in a different eye. His letter was predjudiced, close-minded, immature, mean and maybe contained a touch of jealousy. Besides, Mountain View Ave. is not even near any grocery stores, nor downtown. Let's all just get along!

see all the trouble a freeway can cause? i live on the west side of the freeway but get along even with PINS on the east side of the freeway. Whatayathink PINS, should we start a "hands-across-the-freeway" project?

Hi HM! I like your "hands-across-the-freeway" idea. Great minds think alike as it is very similar to a theme I've worked up for a Petaluma 360 Blog on Wednesday. ;-)

KRRH - thank you. I did draft a letter, but I never finished it in time to send it.

There were two interesting letters today, and Frank Simpson wrote an good blog today about it.

Unlike any of you I actually know Mr. Way, and I believe he was responding in severe frustration over the recent attempted validation of the unsustainable suburban lifestyle perpetuated in the lack of forethought in the way the east side was allowed to sprawl unchecked. While his tone may have been divisive, it doesn't drown out his very valid concerns.

I believe the following quote is applicable:

'Ever-busy, ever-building, ever-in-motion, ever-throwing-out the old for the new, we have hardly paused to think about what we are so busy building, and what we have thrown away. Meanwhile the everyday landscape becomes more nightmarish and unmanageable each year. For many, the word development itself has become a dirty word.

Eighty percent of anything ever built in American has been built in the last fifty years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading - the plastic commuter tract home wastelands, the Potemkin village shopping plazas with their vast parking lagoons, the Lego-block hotel complexes, the "gourmet mansardic" junk-food joints, the Orwellian office "parks" featuring buildings sheathed in the same reflective glass as the sunglasses worn by chain-gang guards, the particle-board garden apartments rising up in every meadow and cornfield, the freeway loops around every big and little city with their clusters of discount merchandise marts, the whole destructive, toxic, agoraphobia-inducing spectacle that politicians proudly call "growth".

The newspaper headlines may shout about global warning, extinction of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other worldwide catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity that it represents...

Suburbia, sprawl, overdevelopment... lacking any center, lacking any shops or public buildings, lacking places of work or play, lacking anything except the treeless streets of nearly identical houses set on the useless front yards... it is a landscape of scary places, the geography of nowhere, that has has simply ceased to be a credible human habitat.'

(from James Howard Kunstler's 'The Geography of Nowhere - The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape' - highly recommended reading! Also: check out Pete Golis' column today in the Press Dem)

It is amazing to me how much energy can be spent on someone's opinion about east versus west, new versus old, etc. For the record, I am not agreeing or disagreeing with what Mr. Way said.

I just think it would be a more productive use of everyone's collective energy to discuss how to resolve or at the very least mitigate topics/issues such as the impending drought, our education system, the meth epidemic in our town, our roads, a possible Indian Casino, inconsiderate people in general whether it is the driver not letting a person make it safely through the crosswalk to the jerks that think that the sidewalks are a garbagecan...I could go on but I think you get the picture. Let's not worry about the east versus west because at the end of the day it is not what really matters. What matters is our community, which is why most of us live in Petaluma whether we have been in the area for decades or just a year. So let's put that energy to good use to find solutions to the real issues that impact our community.

Mr. Korpi, that's so utterly depressing. I think I'll go to a chain-store video rental place in some shopping mall tonight and rent Clockwork Orange and Brazil, something to cheer me up.

Ha! Good one, HM. I'm sorry it was so depressing, but that's because it was written so effectively. Which is the same reason Mr. Way's diatribe was so divisive. He's a very effective writer.

Suburban sprawl is a very serious issue with him (and many others including myself) and he has also targeted the Southgate development and the Dutra Quarry/Riverside stripmine, but with no backlash. Why not? Are we being selective in what we are offended by? And how can we defend Turtle Creek yet take issue with being compared to Rohnert Park? How hypocritical! Are East Siders claiming they're better than Rohnert Parkers?

Sprawl is sprawl, and it should be stopped, not glorified. Mr. Way stands by this contention (as do I) - he only regrets publishing his letter because people only saw the divisiveness and not the point. Now we've got Don Bennett doing the same, taking the moral high road and calling Mr. Way a bigot in today's AC, where he puts words in Mr. Way's mouth that border on the libelous. Did he even read the original letter?! This is the same Mr. Bennett who has long been an advocate of sprawl. His record with the planning commission suggests he never saw a housing tract or strip mall he didn't like, and now he's shifting focus to Mr. Way's supposed bigotry instead his frustration over the real issues:

1. Sprawl is hideous and unsustainable and cheapens our quality of life while ruining the environment. 2. There is no possible way anyone but a realtor or delusional fool could believe Turtle Creek resembles what the West Side "used to look like". Again, I highly recommend James Howard Kunstler's 'The Geography of Nowhere' for a more thorough discussion of this topic.