Editor’s Notebook -- Danette Goulet

Danette Goulet

Pack the cooler and grab your fishing pole because the harbor is open

once again. This should make a large group of residents quite happy.

Residents whom I cannot identify, I’m afraid.

As we head into the new year there are a few topics from 2001 that I

would just like to touch on briefly before moving on. The first, is

resident’s outrage over the limited hours of the harbor, which were

lifted this past week. To those residents I would like to say -- we are

at war.

I realize that since it is being fought on someone else’s soil half a

world away you don’t see the need for your “pleasure fishing” time to be

hampered, but shouldn’t the events of Sept. 11 have taught us all that we

are not as untouchable as we like to think?

For business owners in Huntington Harbour you have my sympathies as

I’m sure your shops have suffered a drastic decline in sales, but for the

many who wrote in saying the Navy should find another way to patrol the

waters because the restrictions have put a damper on their pleasure

fishing and boating -- give me a break. What we are talking about here is

in fact, national security. Does the extra security at airports also put

a crimp in your traveling style? Should we just forget that there is a

network of terrorists out there that has pledged to destroy the American

lifestyle?

So with 24-hour access restored, be thankful as you tool through the

Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station that you live in a place where that

would be allowed at all.

The second topic leftover from 2001 that I feel the need to visit is a

much lighter one. I’m just wondering, is the city in such financial

straights that those white garbage bags that covered parking meters

Downtown at Christmastime couldn’t have been redone?

You know, the ones that had “Seasons Greating’s” printed on them

before they were so obviously doctored with white labels, whiteout and a

red sharpie marker. How embarrassing.

Now, I don’t know how much they cost to make, although I can’t imagine

it’s too much, but what about the city worker who had to go through the

stack of bags changing the a to an e and covering the apostrophe.

How much do we pay them an hour and isn’t their time worth more than

that anyway?

Well, I guess the thought was there.

* DANETTE GOULET is the assistant city editor. She can be reached at

(714) 965-7170 or by e-mail at o7 danette.goulet@latimes.comf7 .