Letters: Big Solar; the gift of reading

Solar choices

Re “Standing their sacred ground,” April 24

The choice is not between disturbing Native American grave sites or building clean-energy projects; it’s between continuing these huge, inefficient, enormously expensive and environmentally destructive boondoggles in the desert or using solar the way it should be used: with panels on every rooftop supplying that building’s energy needs.

The attempt to fit solar into the portfolio of big energy companies is a doomed strategy that may be good for Southern California Edison’s bottom line but is bad for the desert environment and the species that live there. Turning every building into its own miniature solar energy collector might imperil Edison and its fellow utilities, but hey, isn’t that what capitalism is supposed to be about — creative destruction?

Mark Gabrish Conlan

San Diego

Aunt Vera’s gift

Re “The gift of words,” Opinion, April 22

What a delight it was to read the lovely Op-Ed article by Susan Straight. Her words immediately took me back to my grandparents’ apartment in the Bronx on Christmas Day 1951, when my Aunt Vera presented me with a shiny, fat book titled “Fairy Tales.” I remember taking the book to a back bedroom and reading it in its entirety that very night. This is such a vivid memory that I believe it marked the beginning of my lifelong love of books and reading.

Thank you to Straight and all the other people who put books in the hands of children.

Linda Mele Johnson

Long Beach