Dear Editor,

Lisa Pampuch did not miss the point about "library net porn," as Cynthia Walker accuses, though there is no doubt Ms. Walker delights in opportunities to correct.

Thankfully, she isn't the librarian, who would only shush us to control our audible output, not visual input. Another voice quoted in the Dispatch asserts that "libraries are antiquated" and another says, "Some people will have to seek day care alternatives."

Not everyone can spend time and money at Barnes and Noble, or keep the sum total of their knowledge on a hard disk. The question, "Where do the children play?" has a different answer for different folks. Economic survival of the family may preclude other after school activities. Would you rather have the child on the street?

The libraries are a sanctuary, a place to feed our head. Communities need more of them, and more people who frequent them. It would be nice to look at ours with the same civic pride we have for shopping centers.

There are billboards up and down the highway for our Outlets, yet none point the way to our library.

Our individual share of Measure F is worth the treasure of knowledge. There are those who would begrudge this, because a policy of absolute freedom is beyond their control. We do the child no favor by conditioning them to rely on external forces of authority. Let them learn garbage in is garbage out on a computer, but we can discern the difference.

Instead of a repressive "no," explain what pornography is, who engages in it and why. When curiosity is satisfied without the prurient guilt, they will move on from Playboy to biology, perhaps discovering that Grey's Anatomy is more than just a TV show.

In our city there is litter, graffiti, crime. Teach your children the media equivalent, and how to handle it. Come back to the libraries. Every word written or image digitized will not meet your standards, or the "wishes of the majority of the community."

As a child, I reveled in the freedom and refuge the library provided. When I reached for Saul Bellow's "Adventures of Augie March," it wasn't the doggie cartoon I expected, but it revealed a world the nuns hadn't mentioned. The first paragraph said, "I am an American, - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted;. Sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles. Everybody knows here is no fineness of accuracy of suppression: if you hold down one thing you hold down the adjoining."

Debra Marks, Gilroy

The Golden Quill is awarded occasionally for a well-written letter.

Don't forget, it's bad news when public transit use goes up

Dear Editor,

That's bad news about the Valley Transportation Authority's ridership increasing because it means that our deficit spending is increasing, our air pollution increasing, and our road and bridge maintenance expenses increasing with the heavier axle weights.

If the VTA and our other Metropolitan Planning Organizations had fares that covered their costs, then we might have some good news.

Otherwise, higher ridership means higher tax subsidies means higher taxes means less money for core functions of government.

The solution is to privatize transit.

Joe Thompson, Gilroy