Stake out the pavement
YOUR EDITORIAL (''CBD display ban threat to city soul'', August 28, p24) rightly credits the late Gus Petersilka as the man who gave Canberra its outdoor cafe society. He would urge Garema Place booksellers and others to follow his example.
He defied the occasional midnight confiscation of his pavement cafe by authorities until his one-man campaign attracted the people's widespread support. The government caved and now would not dare ban Canberra's pavement cafes.
Pavement bookstalls are treasure troves. You don't go into a bookshop to ask for The Second Cuckoo, Kenneth Gregory's selection of letters to the Times since 1900; nor to you go in to find An Exaltation of Larks, James Lipton's exhaustive list of collective nouns; and the late Dirk Bogarde would have been delighted to know his early autobiography, A Postillion Struck by Lightning, was bought from a tray of remaindered authors.
These gems and others are the glittering prizes when rummaging pavement treasure chests. To the barricades!
Ian Mathews, Garran
Replaced by robots
NOW THAT our city is becoming nicely sanitised, perhaps the population could be replaced by robots.
We could then easily achieve the desire for ''no waste''.
Susan Jackman, Spence
Farewell to a Kennedy
I WONDER how many other people, as teenagers, became politicised and vowed to live a life of public service and activism because of the candidacy of Robert Kennedy for presidency of the United States in 1968.
That feeling of excitement was galvanised, of course, by his assassination and despite all the strife that attended the life of Teddy Kennedy, still he represented the defiant, anti-establishment fervour we felt 41 years ago.
President Obama is an admirable successor but I, for one, am sad to see Senator Kennedy go.
Jennifer Saunders, Canberra City
Pests to good use
I'M DEFINITELY getting a myna bird trap. But has anyone got any good myna recipes?
Ted Richards, Nicholls
Woodchip fire risk
AT THE time of the 2003 fires I was helping my daughter and son-in-law protect their home in Gordon. On my return to Griffith via Woodcock Drive I came across three large heaps of dried wood chips, about 5m by 1.5m in height, stockpiled on the side of the road. They resembled unrestricted coke ovens, blazing infernos with embers being scattered in all directions by gale-force winds, mainly toward houses on the other side of the road.
In recent times I have been astounded by the progressive stockpiling of woodchips at the southern end of Mugga Way in ''upper'' Red Hill parallel to Tamar Street, which abuts the wooded and grassy hills between Red Hill and Mt Mugga. There are 58 piles in all. I have also noticed other stockpiles in bushland close to residential areas in other areas of the city.
I have always had reservations about using wood chips and bark as groundcover in residential areas. Recent official fire warnings about the danger of embers have disturbed my usual state of apathy and stirred me into writing.
Doug Droop, Griffith
Bring on the blockbuster
I READ with interest Sasha Grishin's comments about blockbuster exhibitions (''Boom or Bust'', Panorama, August 29, p20).
He makes some interesting and well-reasoned points. The three main reasons he gives for holding blockbusters are all valid and I am sure correct. I'd like to suggest a possible fourth.
I have recently returned from an overseas trip. I'm not a seasoned traveller and this was a comparatively new experience for me.
Although I enjoyed every minute of it, I have come home sure in the knowledge that if I never see another palace, castle, cathedral or major art gallery again I will die quite happily.
Perhaps I am one of the audience members Grishin refers to as suffering ''a short attention span''. I'm probably also an artistic heathen, but it seemed to me all of the major capital city art galleries I visited suffered from the same problem too many pictures! Time and again I found myself wandering aimlessly through these magnificent buildings, eyes glazed,unable to take in the vast collections.
The Madonna and child, the crucifixion, allegorical scenes, battles, royalty, landscapes, abstract canvases and sculptures crowded in on me and I felt totally overwhelmed. I longed for someone with knowledge to pick out a few good representative works and put them in a friendlier space where I could examine them at leisure.
If they gave me a well-produced catalogue about them to read, that would be an added bonus. It seems what I am looking for is a ''blockbuster''.
Bring them on!
Virginia Berger, Barton
Too much hot air
YOUR ''POLLIES' cracker phone bills rack up $850,000'' (August 29, p9) sounds inappropriately outraged. The national political dialogue for under $1million? That's cheap!
And isn't everybody doing it, with the new human posture of recent years one of hand clapped to ear?
What is the business of a politician, if it isn't talking?
Barrie Smillie, Duffy
A toast to wine
THE FINDING that moderate wine consumption could help stave off dementia (''A little wine could help in fight against dementia: study'', August 28, p3) is welcome but to me unsurprising news. Welcome because I love wine and I recently had to suffer two years (or was it three?) without it. Unsurprising because red wine, in particular, contains resveratrol, a fascinating substance that ''dissolves fat'' and strips unhealthy deposits from blood vessel walls, including those in the brain whose malfunction is a common cause of dementia.
Dr Douglas Mackenzie, Queanbeyan
Loss of a human touch
HAVING read that Woolworths will, in opposition to Bunning's and Coles, buy into the hardware business, I wonder if this will be of any real benefit to struggling ACT hardware and gardening consumers.
Will another superstore mean a better customer experience? Or will it mean more of the same mundane service that unfortunately this consumer generation seems to have accepted from the big out-of-town superstores?
Of course some will say lower prices are worth the sacrifice but is it worth saving the few cents the big stores offer on often low-standard products if it means fighting and arguing with unskilled/untrained floor managers while standing in the same long queue?
David Cavill, Kambah
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