Guest View

Fifty years ago, the film "12 Angry Men" had its premiere. Based on a play originally performed on television, "12 Angry Men" had an all-star cast. Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Ed Begley, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden and Martin Balsam, among others. The film is about the 12 men, jury members deciding the fate of a young man from the tenements of New York accused of murdering his father.

Here's a quick question. Why should you act to reduce the amount of junk mail sent to your home? It's the trees. If you care about trees then you should care about reducing junk mail. The average American home receives 1.5 trees in their mailbox in the form of unsolicited mail every year. That adds up to over 100 million trees cut down and over 28 billion gallons of water consumed to produce one year's worth of this country's junk mail.

Have you ever noticed that making plans for air travel and hotels can be more complicated than launching a space craft? People run small countries with less restrictions and red tape than I've found when making travel arrangements this summer. I mean, there oughta be a law.

Mr. Robert Cerruti's July 3 letter to the editor criticized the Santa Clara Valley Water District in handling the debt payoff for the San Luis Reservoir project. It brought water to Santa Clara County in 1987 and supplies the three Llagas sub-basin percolation ponds in Morgan Hill. Cerruti wrote the project was built at a cost of $247.8 million and we now owe an additional $80 million on top of the original capital cost. He spoke about money the water district set aside for repayment and wanted to know where the money went. Specifically, he argued that annual payments should have been made starting in 1987 to pay down the capital cost and the interest.

Problems with Proposition 90, that have devastating impacts on

Spring has arrived and we are well into the second half of our school year. I thought it would be an appropriate time to give the community an update on "what's been happening" in the Morgan Hill Unified School District over the past 20 months and what to expect in the near future.

Talk to anyone in Morgan Hill about our police department and the conversation usually focuses in on the need for more police officers. Even when new positions are created and funded, finding people to fill them is a greater challenge. If you are a student thinking about a career, think about one in law enforcement.

Global warming. Regional response. Individual action. 

Our national motto, "e pluribus unum" is Latin for "from many one." It spoke of the unity of sovereign states into one nation. It also spoke of the melding of many cultures into one American culture. That culture, conceived in the 1600s, and born in 1776, grew to become the most creative, most productive, most benevolent, most liberating and most sustainable culture in human history!