Cheers Wise Packaging Choices

Here’s a big shout-out to Sushi Monster in Montrose! This restaurant has consistently excellent food while using a minimal amount of single-use/non-recyclable plastic for their take-out packaging, the least of the numerous local restaurant options I patronize. My latest to-go order from them used paper or cardboard containers except for one tiny Styrofoam® dipping sauce cup, and a paper soup bowl with a plastic lining, both not recyclable, all in a reused cardboard box instead of a plastic bag.

There is an unacceptable increase of plastic waste because of our new normal of take-out, made worse because recycling has decreased. As far as I know Glendale recycles only #1 and #2 PET. All other plastics we put in our grey bins go to the landfill with taxpayers paying extra to dump them. Some plastics that other jurisdictions claim to recycle are not recyclable or not economically viable to recycle so meet the same fate.

This flood of plastic isn’t inevitable – it is up to consumers. Restaurants can charge a little more if need be, or let us choose a greener packaging option with a surcharge, or get really creative and figure a way for us to (re)use our own containers. Until these single-use plastics and poisonous polystyrenes are legally banned everywhere as they should be many customers like me will be happy to vote with our money for less plastic with our take-out.

Roberta Medford
Montrose

Walk At Your Own Risk In La Crescenta

On the morning of Jan. 9, while walking I waited at the corner of Honolulu and New York avenues to cross the street headed towards Altura. When the light turned green and the walk sign lit, I stepped into the crosswalk and began walking. Good thing I was paying attention because a woman coming down New York turned left on Honolulu and didn’t see me. I shouted at her and raised my arms up in the air, but she never saw that either. One block up New York another woman came to a slight stop and turned right onto New York as I was half way across that street. She too did not see me as she never looked to her left to see if there was any traffic coming.

I was not hard to miss as I was wearing a bright yellow LAKER shirt.

People, seriously: please slow down and pay attention!

Tracy Collins
La Crescenta

Poll Problems Challenged in Washington, D.C.

Mary O’Keefe and CV Weekly (Jan. 7) have tried to keep the sad events in Washington, D.C. in perspective but were not totally fair. And that reminds me of a saying: “They murder but nobody talks about it, if I just sigh I am universally condemned.”

For months violent protests, riots, shooting, looting and destruction in a dozen cities had continued. Some large areas became “no go zones” ruled by the unruly mobs that attacked the courthouses and police precincts. But all that was defended as “peaceful” by Democrats, the Left and liberals!

In Washington, D.C. when big crowds of “actually peaceful” Trump supporters came to protest game-changing election irregularities, many infiltrators and provocateurs mingled with them to indulge in some destruction (very minor as compared to other protests elsewhere). Even that was clearly condemned by President Trump and many other Republican leaders. Of course, the Democrats, liberals and their supporters in the mainstream media condemned more loudly, and even blamed the President for “inciting” it.  

There was abundant evidence of irregularities in mailed ballots, multiple voting, non-verification of signatures, exclusion of “other” poll watchers from counting centers, denial of the widespread inclusion of ineligible voters and vote-harvesting – all documented. Democrat leaders encouraged and even celebrated inclusion of millions of “new” voters – obviously from out-of-state to influence the elections (especially in Georgia).

There were several court cases but none decided on merits. Almost all cases were dismissed without even hearing of the evidence. In one case, a judge, sister of the defeated Democrat leader Stacey Abrams, refused to correct the voters list and exclude dead and out-of-state voters. Many state laws were changed just before the elections.

It was shocking that for most of the time the President and many other Republican candidates were leading then, from somewhere, or nowhere, boxes of ballots appeared and most of them, if not all, were for Joe Biden and other Democrats.

Wasn’t that suspicious and called for thorough investigation and verification? But that was denied.

So what was challenged in Washington, D.C. was not “democracy” but “election irregularities” to actually defend democracy.

Yatindra Bhatnagar
Tujunga