Maybe Obama just didn’t want to upset any delicate reconciliation apple cart that might finally be coming together between the nations of Turkey and Armenia themselves.
HARVEY PEARSON
Los Feliz
Columnist right about melting pot
All Glendale residents not born in the United States should read Dan Kimber’s column in the April 17 issue of the Glendale News-Press (“Greet melting pot with open arms,” Education Matters).
As he states, the U.S. is a nation of diverse people, with most immigrants coming to this country for the freedom and opportunities that await them. If immigrants and their children are advised by friends of their own ethnic group to stay in their own group, then they are not assimilating, and they are only hurting their opportunities for jobs and getting along with their neighbors, and they are not promoting the progress of this great nation.
Kimber states that some parents of an ethnic group that he knows warn their children to stay within their own ethnic group or they will be disowned. How sad. If these parents feel this way and are so hateful, why did they immigrate to the U.S.?
I was in a market a few days ago and overheard an Armenian mother and her children conversing only in the Armenian language.
What a disservice this mother is doing to her children who need to learn and talk in English if they are going to be happy, successful residents of the U.S.
WALTER P. WINNER
Glendale
Community must shield water burden
We are in a statewide drought (“Agencies prep for less water,” April 16). The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a Stage 2 water supply allocation of 10% reduction in imported water supplies. Foothill Municipal Water District (one of 26 member agencies of MWD) has adopted a drought water shortage plan for the residents in La Cañada, Altadena and La Crescenta. This water shortage condition may last more than a few years because of ecological collapse of the fisheries in Northern California.
Therefore, water conservation may become a mandatory requirement throughout Southern California due to these reductions of supplies from Northern California.
Unfortunately, the cost of imported water from MWD is also going up — about a 20% rate increase effective Sept. 1, primarily because of these regulatory and court decisions to reduce the amount of water from Northern California.
So a key water conservation goal this summer is to reduce your home water use by 10%. To get a lot of ideas of what you can do to save water at your home, go to www.bewaterwise.com.
Thank you for thinking about your water use during the hot summer months. The water we save this summer will save you some money on your water bill, but more importantly, it will be stored in our Southern California reservoirs for next year.
RICHARD ATWATER
La Cañada Flintridge
EDITOR’S NOTE: Atwater is a member of the Board of Directors for the Foothill Municipal Water District.
