Tribal Park in Desert

I read with a great deal of interest your informative and fair article “Indians Lead Last Stand in the Desert” (by Lynn Simross, Feb. 10).

My family and I have known the area of which you wrote since the early ‘20s and sincerely hope your article will generate enough interest, especially among the very wealthy, to make a tribal park possible.

RUTH GARSTONE

Altadena

After reading your coverage of the conflict over the proposed Andreas Cove Country Club, I was compelled to write.

When the original settlers came to California, they were able to view the resplendent beauty of an undeveloped wilderness. In the relatively short time since, we have grown to extend the boundaries of our built environment farther and farther into this natural landscape. As our cities have multiplied, we have eaten up progressively larger pieces of our once beautiful valleys and hillsides. To extend our greediness into the Andreas and Murray canyons just outside Palm Springs would be yet another example of our seeming need to dominate and develop our diminishing natural landscape.

Palm Springs, as it exists today, has become a true oasis in the desert. However, the developments that have thrived here are by no means natural. This leads me to believe that Jim Rothschild, vice president of the Andreas Cove Country Club, ought to listen more closely to his own words. “To make the land usable, it will cost about $50 million. . . . But we’ll have to let nature take its course. Time will tell what happens.”

A $50-million investment to make the land usable does not sound natural to me. If time and nature were able to take their own courses, the land could still be enjoyed for its natural beauty, as a tribal park. In this way, hiking, riding and picnicking could continue, and the Agua Calientes could preserve their native bond to the land.

Richard Milanovich, tribal chairman of the Agua Calientes, summed it up best when he stated: “Once it’s developed, it’s gone forever. This may not look like much to people who don’t know. But it is.” Obviously the developers of the Andreas Cove Country Club are among those who don’t.

LORI A. LIND

Hawthorne

Hats Off to L.A. Officer

Bravo to Marshall Berges for his moving “Survival in the ‘80s” about Adrienne Doyle, officer in the Los Angeles Police Department (Feb. 10).

It is definitely a lesson in determination and independence and how it helped her with her profession and in reaching her goals. She is to be admired for her strength and courage, and it is something we can all profit from.

My hat is off to Officer Adrienne Doyle.

SUZANNE MARX

Encino

My thanks for the (shall we say “droll”?) article on Adrienne Doyle.

Doyle is surely to be commended for her ability to advance in spite of being pegged in a purportedly derogatory manner by some of her LAPD peers. . . . She applied for a new drug education unit being started and her bosses turned her down. . . . However, Officer Doyle overcame their objections: She told her bosses, “Listen if anybody can educate, I can educate.” She said, “I kept reciting my credentials, including my counseling experience. They were skeptical, but when they finally accepted 10 out of 60 candidates, I was the only girl.”

I am quite sure that Doyle was elated and considers herself a role model. Her commitment to her ideals few people would dispute. I am sorry to put it this way to Doyle: If it is true that she can educate then it is surely true that she can learn. Using the word girl to denote a policewoman is an inappropriate if not thoroughly offensive linguistic expression that may quite effectively diminish her status.

Good therapy for Officer Doyle would be to repeat several times daily this simple litany: I am not a policegirl. I am a policewoman. That man over there is not a policeboy. He is a policeman. We are police officers and my chief is Daryl Gates, policeman in charge of perhaps the greatest police department in this country, a man who is required by law to recruit women so that they will comprise 25% of the entire police force by 1990.

H. R. LANSU

Los Angeles

Handicap of English

The comments of your columnist, Edward Cornish, on English developing into a global language (“A Globe of English-Speaking People May Be in Our Future,” Feb. 1) and its implications for world communication and peace are right to the point. With the demise or fading of other aspirants, Latin, German and French, there is an essential function to be filled in this vacuum.

But English has one great handicap: Its appalling spelling and phonetics that make it an extremely difficult language for foreigners to master. Take the sound of e as in the word we . Not only do we use a simple e as in be , but we spell it ee in glee , ea in meat , ey in key , y in Jimmy , ui in suite , i in fatigue , ie in pier , ei in weir , etc. Words spelled similarly may be pronounced a half-dozen different ways. One cannot tell by reading the English language how words are to be pronounced. Half the time the consonant g is pronounced like a j as in wage , and s like a z as in praise . There is no earthly use for the letter c , which is either pronounced as a k or an s , or the letter x , which is pronounced as either a z or as ks .

If we expect other people to swallow their pride in their historic languages and learn ours, then we could at least simplify it and make it phonetically sound.

But how? A federally appointed academy of language experts could do the pioneering. Other English-speaking nations could be invited to join in this project. Then with government documents, newspapers and current publications following the recommendations, the rest of us would soon be following their lead.

I suspect there are a lot of traditionalists and sentimentalists who would oppose this development, wanting to hang on to the historic roots in words, whether from the Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Norman, Germanic, or what not. But once it was accomplished I believe we would be amazed at the way the world would rush to English as an international language.

TOM PENDELL

Balboa