Giving Back

Dear UTW:

Tulsa Advocates for the Protection of Children (TAPC) would like to thank you and your company or group for your generous donation to Christmas for Kids. We were able to provide Christmas to 1,115 children residing in Tulsa County Child Welfare custody. This would not have been possible if it were not for your generous donations.

Please visit our newly updated website at tapchelps.org as your company or group is listed as donors to Christmas for Kids. While you are on our website please look at the different opportunities to volunteer. TAPC can use as many volunteers as possible throughout the year. TAPC also asks you to "like" us on Facebook and please invite all your friends to do the same!Please send this to everyone that helped your company or group as we would like to extend our thank you to EVERYONE! Thanks again for your donations during the Christmas holiday!

--April Waller, TAPC Program Director

Out With the Garbage

Dear UTW:

I say lets recycle Dewey and the rest of this group ("What a Mess," UTW Feb. 16-22).

--Mark Thompson

Tulsa is so backwards, other cities are way ahead of us in almost every avenue ("What a Mess," UTW Feb. 16-22). Tulsa, not Oklahoma City was the jewel of Oklahoma, now, we just have people at the city levels try and do their own thing with out regards to what the citizens want and what is best for Tulsa. Keep it up and no one will want to here.

--Jodie DeArmon

Once a week trash removal ("What a Mess," UTW Feb. 16-22)?? Next year, because of this, will they be voting on how to remove rodents because of the pileup at residences? What a farce this all is. I am for the recycling though, did it for years in another state.

--Frances Pierce

Inked Out

Dear UTW:

Holy crap. "E-books won't survive if their print forbears vanish." People will get tired of the Internet, as it's just a passing fad ("How to Save Books," UTW Feb 23-29). Really? Quick! Someone print out the Internet before it's too late.

Rall's solution is... drum roll please... government intervention in setting price floors and juggling antitrust laws. This tone-deaf approach is so vastly similar to bailouts for auto companies and alternative energy firms that go flop anyway. Who pays for it? Your tax dollars. Maybe bailouts to Barnes and Noble will come with a cool catchphrase -- "Books -- too big to fail."

If you're a hard-copy enthusiast (like me) and enjoy lining your floor-to-ceiling book shelves with weighty tomes, I might suggest stocking up on them now, maybe buying a subscription to 100 Greatest Books. They charge the crap out of you -- $25 per tome plus tax -- but all the faux leather sure looks purty.

The future will be more electronic, not less. It's been going in that direction for about, oh, the last 150 years. So don't listen to Rall. Government intervention in the free market in any and all cases only leads to perpetual subsidies of dying industries, wasted tax dollars, and simply prolonging the inevitable.

--Todd Kreigh

Spooky Satisfaction

Dear UTW:

If everyone drives air-polluting, gas-guzzling, parking space hogging monstrosity of glass, metal, and rubber on four wheels to visit NYC's Brooklyn Bridge Park, it would look like my front lawn surrounded by a typical Wal-Mart parking lot on a Saturday afternoon ("Planting Crocuses in the Water," UTW March 1-7).

No matter the latest grandiose plans the George Kaiser Family Foundation has for the Blair Mansion, there is one looming white elephant already in place to devolve the $150 million project into nothing more than an insipid Utica Square-Wannabe-by-the-River.

Parks do not exist in vacuum. Visitors have to somehow get to them, either by car, bicycle, walk or bus. According to 2007 Complete Streets Task Force Report, there are almost 100,000 Tulsans who won't be able to get to park, simply because they don't have access to motor vehicles.

To be sure, the Foundation's $12 million worked wonders for the dual trails. But, if we continue with the tired paradigm of putting people in cars to get to the River, parking will be the bane of the project's success.

There is a high price to be paid for "free" parking. As the new traffic generator, the project should be held accountable for managing transportation demand, instead of the City taxpayers subsidizing road widening and "free" parking.

Given the alleged wealth of the Kaiser Foundation, it is surprising the undertaking is truly uninspired. Are there not enough South Tulsa parks?

Do the park. But, I challenge the Foundation to invest $890 million for a much bolder vision: Re-engineer a new Tulsa where the average commuter needs no valid driver's license to conveniently live, work, and play. Channels Project for the 99 percent, saving every Tulsan over $5,000 per year, every year.

Imagine a Tulsa where the obesity rate cut in half by 2020.

Imagine a Tulsa where citizens are not subject to the death penalty just for jaywalking across 41st and Yale.

Are you up for the challenge, GKFF? Which project will it be, Blair Park or Blair Witch?

--Paul Tay