Garden too fruitful? Share your bounty

If you have an over production of fruits and veggies this summer then you have a special opportunity to share with your community. Your local food banks will accept your fresh fruits and vegetables. Please deliver your excess unprocessed produce to your local food bank.

Pam Serra-Wenz, Linn-Benton Food Share, Corvallis

First a burglary, now foreclosure looms

I want to let the burglar or burglars who broke into my home at 3944 Jefferson-Marion Road, Jefferson, to know what your selfish act has caused.

One is the fact that you broke down our door, trashed our house. Two is that you stole anything and everything you could take with you as fast as you could, even using our own suitcases and hamper and laundry baskets to carry your loot out. Mostly and what you don't know is the pain you have caused.

Our home was in default as I hadn't worked for over two months. I myself had just taken pictures of the M.J. Hummel 3D prints that had been brought over from the Netherlands to try and sell to raise money for our mortgage, which you took from my bedroom closet.You stole a ring that was made up to commemorate my only brother when he was killed.

It was a diamond from my mom's wedding ring surrounded by 8 garnets 4 smaller and 4 larger forming a flower set in white gold. ?This is irreplaceable, making me feel the loss of him all over again.

You stole my husband's only copy of his birth from the Netherlands, his Social Security card, his citizenship papers and his police academy papers. You stole our pink slips to our cars, our Social Security info for all seven of our children and diplomas. You even took my grandmother's gold bridges and teeth.

The damage to our home are still being tabulated as even the fingerprint powder is not coming out. The insurance is not covering all the losses ( in fact, nothing so far). I feel unsafe in my own home. I wonder where my family heirlooms are. What is being done with our personal information? Is someone being shot with our guns? I have cried practically non-stop since you ruined my life on June 23, 2009.

I wasn't able to pay my mortgage, and my mortgage company doesn't care about my losses due to you. If you have even one-fourth of a heart, please, please return some of these items to us. You can mail them (at least until we get foreclosed on) to the same address you burglarized.

Cherryl Pardoel, Jefferson

In reply to O'Reilly: Open ears and eyes

Bill O'Reilly (July 12) does not get it. It is not about him, it is about what Michael Jackson meant to a lot of other people, many of them black.

He did not see Michael Jackson as the Black Elvis and did not see that media breakthrough as a significant advance against racism. He does not want to celebrate Michael Jackson as an artist, he wants to moralize about drugs and celebrity.

As we listen to the Southern Republican senators lecture soon to be Justice Sotamayor on racism, do we note that they seem oblivious to their own ethnicity and gender. All the White Guys see the world free of bias because they are normal human beings while people of color and women are gender- and ethnic-conscious. How amazingly blind they are about themselves!

Those who honored Jackson know the story of his anguish and abuse. A lot more than celebrity vampires appear in this story.

I was never a big Elvis fan, and the response to Michael Jackson surprised me too. The media went nuts, and all Michael, all the time got old.

And even if I think Stevie Wonder's music is an even more important breakthrough on race, it is clear that for many Americans and citizens of the world, Michael's breakthrough with MTV as a dancer was liberation from racism for them.

White Guys need to open their ears and eyes and stop thinking that they are not ethnic or conditioned by gender. It gets embarrassing to be part of this demographic.

Don Caughey, Corvallis