Letters to the editor | Sept. 11 edition
Published 11:25 am Thursday, September 11, 2025
GRAMMAR
A prominent member of Congress complained that the government wants to surveil the food you eat, including fake meat that has been grown in a “peach tree” dish.
Not petri dish. Peach tree dish. Catcalls and embarrassment might have been avoided, if only she’d first talked to Ellen Jovin. Ellen, an all-knowing grammar expert, has been seated at her Grammar Table in all 50 states, dispensing advice on all sorts of language questions. Think Lucy, offering psychiatric help for 5 cents from her sidewalk booth.
Unlike Lucy, whose advice is snappy and not particularly kind, Ellen takes real joy in exchanging thoughts with anyone who walks up to her table. Freewheeling discussions about our complex, beautiful language often ensue, and people sometimes open up, telling personal stories and sharing their passion for words.
Ellen and her husband, Brandt Johnson, have made a movie, “Rebel With A Clause,” documenting Ellen’s sidewalk encounters all over America. Brandt was the cinematographer, director and editor of this absorbing, pretty fabulous documentary movie, which will play for one day only, at 6 p.m. Monday, September 15, at Vashon Theatre. Amazingly, Ellen and Brandt will travel all the way from New York City to present the movie and to answer our own questions during a Q & A session after the film.
Please come and enjoy the give and take of Ellen’s encounters with the people who were drawn to her table and her love of language.
Todd Pearson
ELECTION
I share the concerns Eric Pryne expressed in his letter last week about the candidacy of Dr. Kelly Wright for Vashon Health Care District Commissioner. Why is she running to help lead a district whose very existence she opposed?
I’m fully supporting her opponent, incumbent Dr. Rebecca Chavez, for Commissioner. As a Clinical Psychologist for over twenty years she asks good questions, listens and is skilled at bringing people together. I know Rebecca is committed to working with other commissioners to protect and expand health care services on Vashon.
Tag Gornall
ELECTION
I’m writing in response to Eric Pryne’s recent letter regarding Kelly Wright’s candidacy against an appointed incumbent. Or shall we say, a hand-picked incumbent?
Pryne praises Vashon Health Care District for “expanding” access to healthcare on Vashon. But let’s examine that word: expand. A more fitting term might be bait and switch. What we’re being sold today is far removed from the vision pitched to us in 2019 at the Strawberry Festival. “Expansion” wasn’t part of that original sales pitch.
Here are a few points worth considering:
Dispatch Health may be convenient but island life isn’t. Serious medical care has always required off-island travel, and that hasn’t changed.
Who handles that off-island transport? Vashon Fire and Rescue. Dollars spent there stay local, unlike those funneled into a sprawling medical conglomerate.
Vashon Fire & Rescue is here 24/7. Its team is trained for a wide range of emergencies. Dispatch Health, on the other hand, is tethered to ferry schedules, tides, and weather. When the funding dries up, so will their presence.
Has Kelly Wright changed her stance on VHCD? I sincerely hope not. I’ve changed mine — because what we were promised was a Fiat, and what we’re getting is a Tesla. We need Wright to offer thoughtful opposition, not a rubber stamp.
Yes, VHCD passed with a 71–29 margin. But Mr. Pryne, what do you think that margin would be today? That question deserves an honest answer too.
Steven Nourse
ELECTION
We are fortunate to have a handful of civic minded islanders who serve as commissioners on our taxing district boards. These individuals devote countless hours, with little and usually no compensation, attending to the affairs of the school, fire, park, hospital, sewer, cemetery and airport districts. Given the commitment required, it is not surprising that many of these elected positions will regularly have only a single candidate.
That is why it was more than unkind for Eric Pryne to question the motives of Kelly Wright’s candidacy for a position on the Vashon Health Care District board. Especially, since he knows Dr. Wright will be providing her vision for the district in the voters’ pamphlet.
I was part of the 71% of the island that voted to establish the hospital district. However, upon a current review of the 2019 voters’ pamphlet, I discovered the district today in no way resembles the district promoted in 2019. While initially the hospital district provided funds to maintain our primary care provider, that is a thing of the past. At the same time, the district never has had local control of that provider or its successor, as was promoted when we voted six years ago.
I fail to see the relevance of Dr. Wright’s opposition to a hospital district in 2019 that in no way resembles the district we have today. Rather than questioning a person’s motives for offering to serve, Pryne should simply endorse a person he feels is more qualified.
Scott Harvey
GUNS
Guns must be fun because we never do anything meaningful about the problem. There’s talk, but talk can’t stop bullets. In the U.S. yearly 40,000 people are killed by cars. About 47,000 are killed by guns. That looks right because cars aren’t designed to kill people while guns are.
The U.S. population is about 330 million people with more than one gun per person. No law will stop all those guns from killing people. I have never heard anyone say they want to take everyone’s guns away. So let me say it. I want to take everyone’s guns away.
Much is made of the misreading of the Second Amendment. It’s really about the right to have armed militias not armed citizens. Forgotten in the gun debate is the Fifth Amendment: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….” What about my right to go buy a head of lettuce without worrying about bleeding out from a gunshot on the produce department floor?! What about the rights of the two children murdered in Minneapolis while praying? When I weigh your supposed right to own a gun against the right of children to live out their lives, you deserve no consideration of any kind. Gun ownership isn’t a sign of brainlessness, but it’s close. We can have guns or safe children, but we can’t have both.
Shelley Simon
