The past keeps disappearing

First the drive-in closes and now the skating rink! Thanks to the Fleshers for giving my children some great memories. I guess I'll have to be the one to teach my grandkids the Hokey-Pokey.

Jean Mangrum, Crabtree

Handling carts in Chicago

I just returned from Chicago this week, and in the Democrat-Herald I noted that city dads were wrestling with the problem of wandering carts.

A Walgreens store had a most innovative answer to store carts. Each cart had a long pipe welded to it. I was curious and finally decided it was so that no cart could exit the store because of it.

Several years ago, also in Chicago, I noted that grocery stores had rails outside the store beyond which one could not take a cart but one could drive up to load their groceries.

In my opinion those are two simple answers to the problem of wandering carts.

Marjorie Nofziger, Lebanon

Return the drivers' fines

A follow-up to your headline story on Saturday. The intersection at Ninth, Geary and Pacific has one other design error that has rankled me since the intersection was striped for traffic control.

Traffic in the left-most turn lane from Geary onto Pacific is directed into the second traffic lane on Pacific. This is also in violation of the law. If our police intend to enforce the problem turns onto Geary, they should also enforce the turns onto Pacific.

The option would be to let the striping stand as the designer intended and to ignore all "improper" turns at that particular intersection.

The city should return all of the drivers' fines as the law versus the striping at that intersection is unclear and confusing to everyone.

Mel Yeager, Albany

Taken to Corvallis - why?

I have had the privilege of knowing so many people that have devoted so much funding and time to Albany General Hospital. I am beginning to feel Samaritan is going to turn AGH into an old-folks home.

Two ladies are injured just across the bridge in North Albany, yet transported to Corvallis. Injured from near I-5 and Highway 34 are too. They could be at Samaritan Albany quickly. Yet they choose to fight the traffic from downtown Corvallis to Samaritan clear to the north. Recently a couple took their burned daughter to Urgent Care at Queen and Geary. They were told to go to the hospital. A great man and good friend, Jim Linhart, suffered a heart attack and was taken the short distance to Urgent Care, only to be then transported by ambulance to the hospital.

Urgent means immediate. Many citizens feel it means emergency. Dr. Kevin Ewanchyna, the spokesperson, said they are trying "to help educate concerned family and friends ... what type of patients should go to Urgent Care."

They feel Urgent Care means you do not have to have an appointment.

Brochures and advertisements will not reach all of the public. If they called their facility "Geary Street No Appointment Clinic," there would be less pain, frustration and possibly even death.

I don't believe Samaritan is concerned about the citizens of Albany like AGH was. I guess their rulers live and reside in Corvallis and more and more patients will go there, even though Albany is in the middle of the valley. And uninformed members of the public will continue to rush patients to the non-urgent care at Urgent Care.

Roger Hawthorne, Albany

Houses? We feel your pain

In response to Peter Vanbaar's letter of Saturday:

Our hearts are with you in the loss of your neighborhood environment because of a new building project butted right up to your property. Our retirement home dreams have also been shattered by the thoughtless, indiscriminate actions of the Albany planning commission, parks department and city council.

We purchased our home because it's located next to Timber-Linn Park. The council has approved the sale of a significant portion of

Timber-Linn Park (the portion next to our residential area) to the YMCA for a 56,600-square-foot facility and paved parking for 250 vehicles.

We can't believe the Albany City Council would sacrifice a beautiful park, used by our neighborhood and the entire community. We're absolutely sick about the year and a half of coming construction and the heavy traffic through our neighborhood forever.

None of that compares, however, to the travesty of having a unique community park sacrificed to private enterprise and the city's lust for easy money gained from this transaction, with absolutely no regard to the way it affects the local residents.

Our city fathers would never allow such things to happen in their own neighborhood.

Terry Greenwood, Albany

Burgerville gains applause

Burgerville isn't only distinctive for its environmental initiatives and employee benefits ("Commitment to sustainability," March 10). The restaurant chain is also helping to improve farm animal welfare.

In January 2007, Burgerville became the nation's first restaurant chain to start using exclusively cage-free eggs, joining a national movement away from one of the worst factory farming abuses. In Oregon and across the country, hundreds of companies and universities refuse to use eggs from hens crammed into battery cages - enclosures so small, the birds can't even spread their wings or walk.

These institutions demonstrate that animal welfare is an essential part of sustainability efforts. More information is available at

humanesociety.org.

Erin Williams, Washington, D.C.

Williams is communications director for the Factory Farming Campaign of the Humane Society of the United States.

Shenanigans of the rich

It finally falls down around them - the big, noncommercial banks have to be bailed out even though the Republicans under Alan Greenspan organized them in the last decades so they wouldn't have government regulation like FDR instituted for the commercial banks. Republicans and conservatives hate FDR and his safety nets for the common people's good.

But the common people finally get where they can't pay their mortgages thanks to the shenanigans approved by the very rich.

You can't get people to rise up against the government and can't even get Bush impeached, but the inevitable collapse of the capitalist market every so often thins out the bad guys a little bit.

Mary Brock, Albany

A successor in Lebanon

Since Mr. Robinson is been released from his duties - as of 2010 - I expect the following people to apply for the job: Rick Alexander, Josh Wineteer and Kim Lawrence and everybody else that seems qualified for the job.

Glen Ashworth, Lebanon