Treptow’s nature shots were out of this...

Treptow’s nature shots were out of this world

After returning from a month of traveling, it was a pleasure to

find Kent Treptow’s thoughtful letter and tear sheet of “Wild at

heart,” Daily Pilot Jan. 21. What a beautiful, lovely feature -- it

reminds me of my early days of working at the Worthington Daily

Globe.

My beginning photography (where I became inspired) was at a small

newspaper in Minnesota. We would tend to do double spread features

like this -- but not as good as Treptow’s.

I was particularly impressed with the osprey shot, which might

have been shot with a remote. I know how difficult that can be. I’ll

be doing a lot of remote work myself this summer on a high-definition

television project on the prairie.

Thanks so much to Treptow for sending me the piece. He certainly

has sensitivity toward nature. Good luck to him in future projects.

JIM BRANDENBURG

Ely, Minn.

* Jim Brandenburg is the owner of Ravenwood Studios in Ely.

Great Park should be an airport, not fair site

In the article “Fairgrounds may move to Great Park,” (April 24)

Assemblyman John Campbell proposed selling and then relocating the

Orange County Fairgrounds to Irvine to “help balance the state

budget.”

If Campbell is sincere in his quest to help balance the state

budget, then all he has to do is help reopen El Toro as an airport.

An airport would be like a river that provides a steady source of

income to the state, far exceeding any financial return to be had

from the sale and relocation of the fairgrounds.

I would bet that the real motive behind this scheme is to set up a

revenue-generating entity -- of any kind -- to make the fake, er,

Great Park look like it is paying its way. And the fairgrounds sale

would provide that appearance. Bear in mind that if the Navy releases

the El Toro land, control of that land will rest with Irvine because

the Orange County Board of Supervisors is allowing Irvine to annex

the base land with “local control.” And that means leaving the moved

fairgrounds firmly in the hands of Irvine Mayor Larry Agran and

company.

The Board of Supervisors is now controlled by South County, Irvine

and a group of developers. Agran has been slowly and steadily

chipping away at the county governmental structure for years and has

expressed a notion that the seat of Orange County government properly

belongs in Irvine.

It behooves all cities in North County to take Agran’s threat

seriously. There is something wrong when one part of the county’s

population is controlling the course of events for the entire county.

That control will provide benefits to South County but will be

detrimental to all of North County.

WILLIAM KEARNS

Costa Mesa