Feeling the power of one man’s exuberant dream

I thoroughly enjoyed the article about Baldasare Forestiere’s underground gardens (“Dreams Dwelled Here,” Jan. 29). Bryan Chan’s photographs showed a true sensitivity to the filtered-light magic of the subterranean realm, and I loved how the writer, Thomas Curwen, found them dirty, awkward and not the future anyone wants. The niece-by-marriage was also good -- a woman of her own vivid imagination, seeing God everywhere under there, installing religious statuary in places she was sure Baldasare had carelessly omitted it. And then there was the professor, reassuring us that there was a sense of tragedy in the man’s life work, since all he accomplished in 40 years was this underground wonderwork that people flock to see, and yet it was, in the end, still Fresno.

What a place, what a world. Thanks again for a stimulating piece.

Peter Yates

Culver City