Bicyclists are here to stay, so please respect our road rights

Friday, while I commuted by bicycle along L Street near downtown, a rather classless woman in a black truck verbally attacked both my intelligence and my gender while shrieking at me to get on the sidewalk. At issue apparently was my audacity at riding my bike along the roadside.

This is the second time I have been berated for riding along L Street. Last time, a decidedly ungentlemanly gentleman nearly ran me down in the process of pulling into a parking spot. It wasn't an accident, I was slowing him down and he told me so.

What both of these drivers have in common is their lack of understanding that riding a bike on the sidewalk is not only more dangerous for bikers, but illegal in some municipalities. Further, bicyclists have a right to share the roadway as long as they follow traffic laws, which most do.

For those motorists who have a problem with bicycle commuters on the road I say this, we're here to stay so please respect our rights.

-- Theresa Fiorino

Anchorage

A presidential comparison

President Barack Obama makes President Jimmy Carter look like a amateur.

-- James Christenson

Willow

There's so much we can do for today and tomorrow

Add the term "harmonic" to "economics" and we might get a framework to pre-identify, define and isolate actions with disharmonious consequences before they occur.

Offshore drilling isn't necessarily disharmonious, but without real disaster response capabilities, it is.

Creating comprehensive recycling centers for Alaska may not show immediate profits, but will provide long-term positive payback and avoid disharmonious and expensive buildup of pollutants.

Mining, using less detrimental but more expensive technology (say, other than cyanide leaching) may not result in the highest corporate bottom line today, but will protect precious natural non-corporate resources, like fish, water and forests, for tomorrow.

Cleaning the oceans may not make tangible income, but will ensure healthy returns from seafood resources far into the future.

Harmonic economics as a general planning rule of thumb would do away with irresponsible and regressive disregard of consequences.

-- Ken Green

Cooper Landing

Kindness to others lifts us all

I want to thank the kind gentleman who pushed my "dead" car out of the traffic lane at Bunnell and Kenai streets Sunday evening earlier this month.

Acts such as this are part of keeping Anchorage a little safer.

-- Mary Nation

Anchorage

Disregarding a police officer's instructions is lack of respect

When the police are called to a disturbance, they go. The police arrive and order the person coming toward them with a weapon, stick, gun or whatever to stop and drop the weapon. If they don't and just keep coming they have no respect for the police or the law.

I believe, in the two recent incidents, if they had obeyed the police they would be alive today.

-- E. Jean Kaufman

Anchorage