In case the readers of the July 29 Letters column didn’t understand Terry Levin’s extended comments about Bob Wulkowicz as the “lone ‘environmentalist,’” or my alleged public gaffe, I will try to explain his job function:
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So far, Madeline Kanner is of no real interest to the bureaucracy or Levin. But when Joravsky puts it on a Reader page for public display, where it might offer some political embarrassment, Terry’s word processor leaps into action. Spokesman, spin doctor, flak catcher, fly swatter, he must neutralize the now-threatening Madeline in the Letters column. Whack, whack, whack. She is a misinformed tree hugger in need of correction and she is taught a lesson about speaking up.
Those extra shots I received in the same letter, and his claim of my dubious credibility, were my continued correction and lesson for writing to the Sun-Times a few months ago. I said the tunnel vision of the bureaucracy, particularly the Department of Streets and Sanitation, killed the trees in the Lake Shore Drive median by salting them to death. In a response to that letter, Terry boasted he caught me with my facts down. Everything I wrote should be negated because his department used calcium chloride in a pilot program last winter.
Mayor Daley, from his position of remarkable power, is given the trust of the people to be a visionary and make this city better. Madeline simply started her campaign from her heart, and she has every right to pursue her concerns. I have devoted the last seven years of my professional life as a public employee to issues including honest tree care, and there are many finished public projects that prove the value of my efforts. Our common disappointment, the Mayor’s, Madeline’s, and my own, is that the bureaucracy still hasn’t quite caught on to the fundamental biological rules of “being green and staying alive.”
