Letters

Eighty years ago Friday, young Eudora Welty sent a letter to the New Yorker seeking employment. This was four decades before she would win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "The Optimist's Daughter" and five decades before "The Collected Works of Eudora Welty" won a National Book Award -- but she showed tremendous promise, writerly skill and lighthearted charm. Here's a portion: "I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. However, I was a New Yorker for a whole year in 1930-31 while attending advertising classes in Columbia's School of Business.

Re "Bending the population curve," Opinion, Dec. 2 The world doesn't want to consider abortion as a method of family planning, but women worldwide do to the tune of about 40 million a year. Half of these are illegal and unsafe, resulting in millions of injuries and deaths, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Universal access to contraception would certainly reduce population pressures, but thanks to gender inequality and religion, women often don't have safe access to abortion and contraception.

Re "Riordan drops plan for pensions," Nov. 27 Los Angeles desperately needs to reform its public employee retirement system, with or without former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan's ballot measure. Riordan and the public employee union leaders who trashed his proposal agree on one point: A financial analysis is needed before a proposal is submitted to voters. Great idea. Let's do it. We can assemble the brainpower from L.A.'s world-class universities, think tanks and consulting firms to give voters the facts about city employee salaries and benefits and how they compare to those paid by other large employers.

Responding to Rafael Medoff's Op-Ed article Sunday detailing FDR's reaction to Jews facing persecution in Nazi Germany, reader Robert Ouriel wrote in a letter published Friday that "as an American and a Jew, I found [Medoff's] criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt for his private comments about Jews most unfair. " He continued: "In singling out FDR, Medoff also ignores the squeamishness of America's modern presidents in dealing with genocide. Jimmy Carter, a human rights crusader, did nothing to prevent Pol Pot from exterminating as much as 20% of Cambodia's population.

Re "Throwing cold water on the romance of beach bonfires," Aug. 10 Gale Holland's article about Newport Beach's ban on beach bonfires is all about provoking emotion with no mention of scientific research about wood smoke. Does Holland know that wood smoke is many times more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke? Wood smoke is known to trigger asthma attacks and can cause heart attacks and strokes. What about the research out of UC Berkeley linking wood smoke to pneumonia and poor cognitive development in children?

I am writing in reference to the article about the Century Council's Parish Pledge program (Sept. 11). I appreciate the praise for the council's joining anti-drunken driving effort with the Division for Hispanic Affairs of the California Catholic Conference. But there were a few unintentional inaccuracies. First, the headline--"Anti-Alcohol Pact Promoted by Parishes." This program is not anti-alcohol, it is anti-alcohol abuse . Second, the article does not mention that the Century Council is entirely funded by some, but not all, members of the licensed beverage industry.

What is news analysis doing on the front page of a newspaper? If you haven't noticed, there's an opinion page for that stuff" That was the question reader Stuart Fink sent us last week after The Times published a front-page news analysis by reporter Peter Nicholas on the debt-ceiling deal's political fallout for President Obama. The paper has published 35 news analysis pieces so far this year, and the question Fink asks often comes up when we do. Reply from Washington bureau chief David Lauter: A newspaper employs many different formats to communicate information and ideas to its readers — news reporting, analysis and commentary being among them.

Re "School posts may be tough to fill," June 11 Regarding the search to replace three chancellors of public colleges and universities, The Times quotes Scott Himelstein, president of the community colleges Board of Governors, as saying, "I think the governor and Legislature are very clear in not wanting to consider any raises in executive compensation. " It's a great sentiment but I have zero confidence that it will happen. There will be extensive national searches, and when the final candidates are selected, the public statements will say that the salaries offered were justified and necessary to attract the best person for each of these exceedingly difficult and complex positions.

Responding to the Op-Ed article Sunday on Vatican II by John Gehring a former assistant director for media relations at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, reader G.V. Climaco of Brea wrote: "John Gehring's hatchet job on the Roman Catholic Church is easily refuted. Instead of invoking the vacuous 'spirit of Vatican II,' he should read its 16 official documents. And good Pope John XXIII himself, in his opening address to the council on Oct. 11, 1962, declared that the church must adapt its light of truth to a changed world but that its deposit of faith 'must be preserved intact' and its teaching authority 're-affirmed until the end of time.' "Helping the poor has from the start been a corporal work of mercy of the church.

Responding to Seth Rosenfeld's May 10 Op-Ed article linking then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan's harsh condemnation of student protests in the 1960s to the eventual decline of the University of California system, reader Bruce Bates wrote in a letter published Tuesday that Rosenfeld "overlooks that this very radicalization has diminished the value of a UC education. " Bates continued: "In the 1950s, when the UC system was at its peak, students were 'well groomed and complacent' (to use Rosenfeld's words)