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WASABI RAGE
As a loyal customer of Kasasoba since its first year in Santa Fe, I find it appalling how the Santa Fe Reporter has exercised its editorial influence in choosing the top 40 restaurants in Santa Fe to the exclusion of this now Santa Fe institution [
]. "Bento boxes for all?" Please…where are your intrepid sources? Oh wait, just a few blocks away.
How come both the New York Times ("Maybe the best all-around Asian restaurant in Santa Fe") and Gourmet magazine (which named Kasasoba the Santa Fe Buzz in its October 2005 issue) are able to provide, at an international level, the correct information about what Mr. Geideman has done to refine and expand Kasasoba's exquisite menu in the past year but yet the Reporter can't be bothered? He is doing some truly original work in addition to building a burgeoning sake business. Wake up and smell the wasabi.
I know that the main business of most newspapers is to sell advertising and I assume that the Reporter is no different. I also understand that these are your editors' picks of what they like to eat…nothing more, even though the full-color, glossy publication may portray more credibility than your Restaurant Guide actually deserves. It's just another "too bad" situation as your editors each week declare themselves the arbiters of culture in our little hamlet.
Jennifer Kilbourn
Santa Fe
ECONIMUNITY
As a business owner employing 12 people, I maintain that the living wage is good for business [Cover story, Oct. 19:
]. A study published in the Harvard Business Review stated that the surest way to grow a business is to get repeat business. Repeat business is tied to content employees who are invested and have a stake in the company's excellence and growth.
The critical issue that no one can ever address is, why can't larger companies afford the living wage? Certainly some companies are so marginal that the living wage poses a dire problem, but for many the issue is greed. "Afford" often depends how much the owners are putting in their pockets or their stockholders' pockets. CEOs making several times more than their lowest paid employee is obscene.
This disconnect exists not just among CEOs, but also among consumers who don't use their power (how they spend their money) to bridge the gap between community and economy. You're psyched to buy your blue jeans for $10, yet you want your well-paying job, decent schools for your kids and community programs. It can't happen. We have to be willing to pay for our community. On a macro level, people who most need the living wage, the working class poor, ironically support their own downward economic spiral through their purchasing at the big boxes that take their profit from our community and redistribute it to their stockholders.
The living wage ordinance, however painful it may be to some, helps bridge the gap between economy and community. It will help our community in the long run and provide a useful model for other cities around the country attempting to right economic inequality. If capitalists were a little bit less greedy and a little more altruistic and visionary, it wouldn't be necessary. It would also help if consumers walked their talk. But, unfortunately, greed still rules the day.
Marc Choyt
President, Celticjewelry.com
Santa Fe
JUNIOR SET
After attending the opening of Gerald Peters Gallery's The Future of Fine Art Show [Zane's World, Oct. 19:
], I am left with the impression that while some of the work holds a glimmer of potential, the show (at least among the headliners) reads like a who's who of the adult children of Santa Fe's upper echelon and moneyed set. So am I left to believe that the future of art locally is a pay-to-play scheme? Talent not necessary, just cash.
A dire future it seems.
Lynn Boca
Santa Fe
OVERHEARD
Having seen two quotes overheard on St. John's campus in the "Eavesdropper" section of the Reporter in the last few weeks, I feel the need to point something out. Although I have no real problem with the Reporter readership having a good, hearty chuckle at the pretentious antics of "those wacky Johnnies," it should be noted that the St. John's student magazine, The Moon, has been running a quotes section similar to the (more recent) "Eavesdropper" for the last year and a half. Never let it be said that we can't make fun of ourselves.
Jonathan Morgan
Editor of The Moon '03-'05
Santa Fe
BORDER ORDER?
While I agree the Minutemen do not belong on the border, although not for reasons depicted in [Cover story, Oct. 12:
], I have questions for Ray Ybarra of the ACLU and Albuquerque attorney Charles Knoblauch.
Assumedly you agree with the foundation of our government, representative democracy-which we see precious little of anymore. That concept, in turn, is based on MAJORITY rule, again rare in an era of an extremist right-wing MINORITY agenda.
While you may disagree with their view, an overwhelming MAJORITY of Americans, across all ethnic, cultural, political and economic boundaries, as reflected by every major public opinion poll in years, feels that immigration, particularly illegal immigration, is out of hand, harms national security and our own poor and is nothing but a cheap-labor subsidy for big business-as we are seeing in New Orleans, where Mayor Nagin scolded government disaster contractors for hiring illegal aliens on the cheap rather than locals. You remember them, the masses of resident poor stirred up from the forgotten depths of public opinion by Hurricane Katrina.
Each year, roughly 80 million new, mostly impoverished, citizens are added to the planet's population. Clearly, the United States cannot serve as the sole safety valve-most other nations have pretty much shut down immigration-for the resulting flood. So, two questions: Where was your outrage when George W cut international family planning under the false pretext that it funded coerced abortions in China? And, since the status quo of hemorrhaging borders is unacceptable to a MAJORITY, what reasonable alternatives do you offer?
Kathleene Parker
Rio Rancho
CORRECTION:
Inn of the Governors' employee profit-sharing has been increasing by $200 per month for the last 24 months, not averaging $200 per month as stated in "
." [Cover story, Oct. 19]. SFR regrets the error.
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