Concerns for Year 2000
* As a senior, my big worry for year 2000 is our priorities for using our tax money. I am fed up with our feeding NASA’s gluttonous appetite for federal funds while tens of thousands American children are not getting enough to eat every day, day after day.
Indeed, feed NASA and fuel industrial/corporate America, but kids need help too. They are our future.
DONALD H. STEVENSON
Camarillo
*
Re “From Wild to Mild,” Jan. 1: The new millennium came not only to the cheering revelers around the globe. The 21st century also dawned in such places as Chechnya and Bosnia and the African nations where famine and AIDS have become daily companions and in the forgotten places of American cities where the homeless huddle.
While the haves of the world celebrated in fact and media presence, the have-nots were ignored. Is this really the message with which humanity should have started such a symbolically special new century?
BETTY ROME
Culver City
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Since twenty is the number after nineteen, and nineteen hundred ninety-nine has ended, it must now be twenty hundred. So would everybody please stop saying “the year two thousand”? Would you please at least, at long last, stop saying the redundant words “the year”? Please?
Along with “the year,” we should consign to the linguistic scrap heap “the 21st century” and “the third millennium,” which calendar purists in their irrelevance so tirelessly say do not begin until 2001. With that reform in mind, I wish everyone a slightly belated happy new (1) millennium--the two thousands, (2) century--the twenty hundreds, (3) decade--the twenty-ohs and (4) year--twenty hundred.
FRANK G. PAGAN
Fullerton
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Although L.A. greeted the new century with little more than a sign, one epoch-making event may have occurred: the magnificent lighting of the Hollywood sign. Let’s light the famous sign every night! Nothing signifies the stature and glamour of our fine city like that beloved landmark. With the ongoing attempts to revive Hollywood, what would be more symbolic? The benefits from increased tourism would more than pay for the costs.
DAVID MARSH
Los Angeles
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Where was all the glitz L.A. is known for? Couldn’t Mayor Richard Riordan have gotten the help of our Hollywood resources to put on a spectacular celebration at the Coliseum at Exposition Park, where our last big event was held (the 1984 Olympics)? L.A. got together then and would have this time. It’s a shame the city had no imagination! Maybe they’re waiting to have it at the real millennium in 2001. Wouldn’t that be great?
ROSE ROBINSON
Los Angeles