As a student in Mr. Kronsberg’s creative writing class at Emeritus College in Santa Monica, I was surprised to see his picture on the front page of the California section of the Sunday L.A. Times, and naturally read the article about the land-use war with considerable interest.
The article seemed to be presenting both sides-the needs of blind children versus the damage to the environment. The danger to the pristine mountain stream, home to the increasingly rare steelhead trout, the loss of oaks and sycamores, all seemed hard to balance against the needs of the children. But then I noticed that blind children only use the camp for two months in the summer and that the camp is rented out to other groups, which pay handsomely for its use, during the rest of the year.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here, and it’s not Mr. Kronsberg playing Thoreau. When will we learn that preserving what’s left of our environment must take precedence over financial profit? Let the foundation find a way to clean up its mess without wreaking destruction to irreplaceable natural resources.
Lucy Horwitz