Readers’ comments: January 12, 2024

A pirate’s special election lament
$490,387 [“CUSD special election final price tag: $490,387,” January 5]
Aye, ‘tis a pirate’s booty to be sure
that Jolly Rogers and his merry crew
buried deep for some to find and secure,

for this treasure’s not to be won by men,
but for our children to find and to pay.
Programs, maps, books, costumes, and adventures
planned for all have now just faded away.

Should Rogers be keelhauled or walk the plank
for the children’s treasure gone for good?
Or old laws be changed by the admiralty?
Aye, to curb this madness, it surely should.

But for Rogers and his ol’ pirate crew,
let us maroon the whole lot for a while,
ignore the rumbles, ravings, and rants,
they’ll soon shout from their well-earned exile.

Joe Tonan
Walla Walla, Washington
Tonan is a retired Claremont Unified School District teacher.

Impressive yes, but redwoods? No.
Dear editor:
I love our huge, impressive California trees about as much as anyone. Hence, I welcomed the 3-paragraph story “Mt. Baldy’s Unsung Giants” [January 5] and the graphic photograph featuring a deeply furrowed trunk. However, for the record, the showcased trees growing up the Ice House Canyon trail are not likely redwoods; they are the similar incense cedars. About a half-mile up the trail, along the perennial creek, and adjacent to a forest green cabin is a magnificent mini-grove of a dozen incense cedars — one with a slanted, blackened asphalt-shingle-roof remnant, indicting the height of the cabin whose rock/concrete foundation persists.
For 50 years our family — first a couple, then kids, finally grandkids — has hiked that Sierra Nevada-like trail. As a proud alumnus of the John Muir Trail completion club, I never cease to appreciate how closely our Ice House Canyon trail mimics some of the finest stretches of even the high Sierra. Still, that wonderful trail can’t have it all. If you want to see a redwood tree or two in Claremont, visit our California Botanic Garden. But according to John W. Robinson’s “Trails of the Angeles, 100 Hikes in the San Gabriels,” Ice House Canyon trail isn’t known for redwoods: A hiker “pass(es) through some of the finest stands of incense cedar in the range, and the ponderosa and sugar pines are healthy and towering,” according to Robinson’s entry for Trail #96, “Icehouse Canyon to Icehouse Saddle.”
Jim Walters
Claremont
Editor’s note: we stand corrected! Thank you, Mr. Walters.