Thursday’s Letters to the Editor

Cold weather shelter

EDITOR: Your Feb. 23 article about warming centers overlooked the inclement weather shelter at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Healdsburg in partnership with Reach for Home (“SR alone opening warming center”). For the past five years, we have offered shelter when the temperature goes below 38 degrees and/or rain falls for two consecutive nights. A hot dinner is always offered to our guests.

Since Nov. 1, we have hosted over 800 bed nights, and St. Paul’s has received no financial assistance from city or county government. While we are grateful to be able to do this ministry for our community, given the severe housing and unsheltered crisis, is this really a sustainable approach for caring for the most vulnerable in our community?

The burden cannot be borne by churches and community nonprofits alone. As counties and municipalities are beginning to invest more in transitional and permanent housing solutions, it is important that they not overlook emergency inclement weather shelter support as well.

Funding for Reach for Home to cover shelter personnel ended Wednesday; thus, Tuesday was the last night of shelter we were able to offer this winter.

REV. SALLY HANES HUBBELL

Rector, St. Paul’s Church

A ‘misleading’ study

EDITOR: Bret Stephens’ Feb. 23 column on the effectiveness of wearing mask to prevent the spread of COVID brings to mind the line attributed to Mark Twain: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” (“Pandemic mask mandates accomplished nothing”).

The vigor with which Stephens embraces the Cochrane report that masks were ineffective suggests that he is not a big fan of masks. But I would refer readers to a report by the International Fact Checking Network that finds the Cochrane conclusion “misleading” and notes that “a growing body of evidence … suggests that consistent mask wearing can effectively reduce the spread of respiratory viruses.”

A collection of poorly designed studies (i.e., the Chochrane report) does not result in a high-quality conclusion. Stephens needs to do his homework a bit better or quit passing on his biases as fact.

DR. RICHARD EVANS

Sebastopol

Helping elders

EDITOR: The recent article regarding Tom Notti and Shannon Holck, the Meals on Wheels driver who compassionately checked on his well-being, reminds me of my dear sister (“Neighors: ‘The whole thing was preventable,’ ” Feb. 23). She was a volunteer for Meals on Wheels and provided elderly clients food deliveries and companionship. She’d often recount times when she was the only person some clients would see all week and how important those meal deliveries were.

Not all of us are able to volunteer in that way, and if we can’t, monetary donations to our local Council on Aging are equally needed. I’m donating in memory of my sister DeeDee and in honor of all dedicated Meals on Wheels volunteers. Will you join me?

CAROL CHAVEZ

Petaluma

Traffic stops and race

EDITOR: In response to the data from the California attorney general’s Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board’s study, Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Chris Mahurin suggested that perhaps tourists of various racial groups are contributing to higher number of Black and brown people pulled over in traffic stops (“Report finds race a factor in stops,” Feb. 19). Hmm, maybe the numbers are off because Rohnert Park is a Mecca for Black tourism? And no Asian or white tourists visit Wine Country?

The district attorney says that the study is flawed because the numbers are based on perceived race. Isn’t that what we are trying to measure? Bias due to perceived race?

It’s always good to question data, but the numbers from the study speak for themselves. They confirm people’s experiences and should be a wake-up call for the police. I hope law enforcement acts on the data, as opposed to trying to explain it away with defensive excuses.

We are all steeped in social conditioning that affects our relationships. This includes police officers’ relationships with the folks they interact with on the job. As long as we keep denying this truth, we won’t be able to truly understand the injustice that we are complicit in.

HONORA RUSSELL

Sebastopol

Smoke-free birds?

EDITOR: Conjectures have been made as to the reason why the birds in the movie and short story went on the attack (“60 years of ‘The Birds,’ ” Feb. 19). Having seen the movie when it first came out in Richmond, Virginia at the Byrd Theatre with my grandfather and sister when I was 7 years old, and watching it since then numerous times, and having read the short story once, I’ve concluded that they went on the rampage because of secondhand smoke. They didn’t like it one bit.

ROBERT MILTON JOHN THOMAS

Miami Beach

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.