Letters for January 31, 2019

Most people?

Please do a story or two on the seedy motels that were left standing in this area. The ones owned by the Arabic community—the ones that are filthy, rat, roach and bedbug infested, where the drug dealers flourish because the managers need extra cash and most managers are an underground of felons and thieves, who do illegal garbage dumps and illegal construction.

Most people have been robbed at these motels, and there are rapes, and other criminal activities covered up. I moved into a bloody crime scene room that had coagulated blood fattening up a bloated mattress. But it was OK because it had a mattress pad covering it up. Guess what. That was a dead child. I found his bloody slipper under my bed. Another crime scene cover-up by scoundrel motel managers.

Above me sits a pedophile. He shot himself in the face here. Now he deals drugs out of his room, and guess who knows? The motel managers. There’s a family of six living in a studio, right next to a tier-three sex offender. It’s a shame the toddler there wears nothing but a diaper. I’m sure someone will help, or not.

Kristin Henriksen

Reno

Siege thoughts

Re “Tricky Dick and Donald” (Notes from the Neon Babylon, Dec. 13) and “In the room” (Editor’s note, Jan. 17):

Less than a week ago I read Bruce Van Dyke’s lament, “It looks like my call of a year ago ain’t gonna happen. Boo! Last December, I waxed VanDykadamus and clairvoyantly speculated that the Trumps would spend but one Christmas in the White House.”

My brain is stressed and never mind the time delays in catching up on my reading and the thought-processing malfunctions that get me to end-result insights, but what my brain did after reading this was, during an episode of half-sleep, begin pondering, seemingly out of the blue, whether Anne Frank’s parents, as they moved into the annex, imagined they would have to remain in hiding so very long. I had never asked myself this question before. I did not recognize that my brain was triggered by Van Dyke’s haunting words.

Just to make certain that I didn’t let the daily stresses of my life push to the background and eventually let languish the important connections being formed in my mind, I then read Brad Bynum’s words, “Do you address the elephant in the room? … The elephant, of course, is Donald Trump. … Some writers—our Bruce Van Dyke springs to mind—have fully embraced their inner pachydermatologist. Bruce is happy to comment on every mendacious speech, every aggrieved tweet and every twist of the investigations.” Only in reading Bynum’s words did I then begin making the connections my brain had already formed.

I’m attempting to put emotions into words here, but as best I can describe what happened in my intuit-first, process-later brain, it is as though many of us are in that annex, listening to the radio (or the modern-day version of huddling together around the radio, that is—channel-surfing cable news networks, accessing our online news sources, exchanging articles with each other), desperately tuning in to any sign, even the faintest hint of hope, that this nightmare will be coming to an end.

R.A. Drew

Reno

Electoral antiquity

Re “Electoral gamble” (news, Jan. 3):

To this day, I cannot help but feel that President Trump’s ascension to the oval office was flawed in light of Secretary Clinton carrying and winning the popular vote by an astounding 2.3 million votes. The presidential elector system is not only democratically and constitutionally unprincipled and unsound but stands counter to voting process principles wherein we, as Americans, have been taught that each and every vote cast counts.

Moreover, does not a nationwide free press, internet acess and information technology negate the very concerns held by our founding fathers? As such, the elector system neither meets nor accomplishes any valid, viable, specific modern era purpose. It is, at best, antiquated and colloquial and should be forthwith obliterated and abolished.

Lastly, I’d like to personally thank the author, Mr. Dennis Myers, for a cogent, thought provoking, informative, well-written article.

Manny Barboza

Reno