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Vol. LXIV, No. 28
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
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Vol. LXIV, No. 28
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
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Ronald Berlin
Jefferson Road
Jacques R. Fresco
Hartley Avenue
To the Editor
I write as an enthusiastic advocate of the Community Park Pool, my favorite Princeton amenity. Here’s what I like about it: It’s a beautiful, simple, healthful place for everyone, like a landscaped park with three different pools, each one in its own “room” surrounded by lush green bushes: a training pool for tots, a full-size Olympic lap pool for swimming, and a deep diving well with a high dive. A thick wall of old arbor vitae trees surrounds the whole complex, so it feels like a refuge, a place apart. The spacious locker rooms have just enough architecture to give you privacy, but no more; they’re as simple as can be, and open to the sky. It’s a true summer place, an unpretentious haven where anyone can exercise, play, socialize, or relax.
I would like the pool to be rebuilt much as it is, along with the necessary repair and upgrading of the pools, pumps, filtration systems and piping. The Recreation Department wants to demolish it and build a new complex costing 6.1 million dollars. That’s probably close to double the cost of a simpler design in the spirit of the present Community Pool. And the cost of membership will rise, making it harder for some to join.
The Rec Department people have been open, decent, and respectful about getting opinions from pool users and community members, and they’ve incorporated some of those suggestions into their current plans. But the island of old, rounded bushes between the main pool and the diving well shouldn’t be cut down, and the existing dense wall of arbor vitae should not be torn out to accommodate additional parking that would rarely be needed. The changing rooms should be spacious and open to the sky, not cramped and confining as they are shown. There is no urgent need for a 600-square-foot air-conditioned meeting room. The bridge over the new ‘transitional’ pool should be a light and tensile footbridge, not a huge, heavy stone affair that would dominate the whole scene. And, above all, the extravagant new buildings — now shown faced in stone, and rising to two stories in height — should be simple, unpretentious, and affordable.
The Planning Board will hold a public meeting this Thursday night to determine whether the new pool complex is consistent with the Master Plan’s goals. It pains me to see my taxes rise again to pay for the destruction of a place that I regard as perfect — sweet, modest, outdoorsy, and artful in its artlessness. Does this new, fancy facility reflect the values of our community?
Ronald Berlin
Jefferson Road
To the editor:
Lest Yeou-Shiuh Hsu’s highly one-sided view of the source of Palestinian-Israeli strife and the unfortunate lot of many Palestinians be taken as a balanced statement (Town Topics July 7), I would like to address the situation from a broader and even-handed perspective. My impressions are derived from a dozen visits to the area over a period of 37 years, some for up to 4 months, as well as considerable familiarity with its history over several millennia, and particularly with the four wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973), none of which were started by Israel. Indeed, it is not enough, or even appropriate, to see the admittedly sorry lot of the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, and demand sympathy for them, without addressing the question of how they came to be where they are today.
The United Nations passed the two-state solution for the British Palestine mandate in 1947. Had the Palestinians and their Arab allies accepted the 1947 U.N. agreement, as the Israelis did, the lot of the Palestinians 63 years later would be infinitely better than it is today. Instead, they chose war then and repeatedly, with the intent of throwing the Israelis into the sea. And now Mr. Hsu expects that such aggression has no price.
In these circumstances, contrary to Mr. Hsu’s claim, Israeli democracy has welcomed as full citizens — with equal rights to higher education, opportunities in business, the professions, and in the Israeli parliament, and equal access to healthcare, indeed everything except the requirement to serve in the Israeli military — all those Palestinians and their descendants who chose not to leave the country during any of the four wars. It is notable that this integration into Israeli society stands in stark contrast to the horrendous treatment of Jews throughout the Arab world.
Mr. Hsu notes the arid state of the Palestinian areas in Gaza and the West Bank, in contrast to the greenery that the Israeli’s have managed to create in the desert. Is that the fault of the Israelis, or is it a reflection of the effort that the Israelis with the help of world Jewry have managed to achieve, in contrast to the lack of effort and deliberate lack of support from an infinitely larger and wealthier Arab population in the middle East?
There is no basis for believing that Israelis are bent on worsening the lot of the Palestinians. They well recognize that they can only gain from having happy neighbors. They only want the recognition of their right to exist where they are. If the support from the Arab nations went for fruitful positive accomplishment rather than for the accumulation of bombs and rockets, and the education of young Palestinians was directed to creativity and economic development rather than to the teaching of hate, terrorism, and martyrdom, would not the Palestinians be approaching today the far better circumstances of the Israelis?
Jacques R. Fresco
Hartley Avenue