MAILBAG - May 31, 2006

Power outage struck this resident as strange

There was no storm, but the power went out earlier this month in a very weird way, with flashes of blue coming through the widow in my bedroom lighting up the middle of the night almost like an alien ship flashing down on the houses in the neighborhood. It seemed kind of scary to open your eyes and peer out from under the covers and see these flashing lights giving you that little turn in your stomach like, “What is happening?” and, “This could be dangerous.”

So you get up to check it out and you turn on the lights in the living room but the dusty, shabby-chic chandelier only goes half on and then starts to flicker in an eerie kind of way like you’d imagine a ghost’s presence to be, which makes you scared again. Then you are relieved when your husband comes out and gives you a hug with hair standing straight on end in a party-in-your-sleep kind of bed head, and you realize you are grateful that he’s there to protect you from this phantasmic power outage because it seems like no other power outage before. Maybe his continual presence in your home is useful after all.

You notice that all your electronics are blinking wildly at you like some kind of message from beyond that you don’t really understand and would need a psychic to decipher. You get mad because the electronics are behaving so strangely with rotating clicking noises and repetitious jamming sounds that you think they’re all totally and completely possessed or fried by this power outage. You’ll have to get a new stove, microwave, tuner, DVD player, CD player, VCR and TiVo to banish the gremlins. The anger and fear build as the room continues to reverberate with the dimming and brightening light and you wish your husband would hurry up and unplug that thing that’s making the clanking sound! You rethink his usefulness.

You run outside and see one neighbor, a young kid who rents across the street, looking bewildered too. And then you notice the lights in other people’s garages going on and off too and take comfort in knowing their houses are haunted like yours. You go back in the house, thinking “Thank God the children are still asleep and don’t know what’s going on under your very own roof!”

CAROLINE MCNABB

Mesa Verde

City Manager Roeder has done a fine job for Costa Mesa

It’s taken me a couple days to stop fuming long enough to write about the letter from Gary Wagner criticizing Costa Mesa City Manager Allan Roeder published in this fine newspaper recently (“City manager to blame for city’s woes,” Mailbag, May 24).

I don’t know Wagner, but he must have one serious ax to grind with Roeder. His critical comments were so far off base that he wasn’t even in the stadium.

Roeder has served the city of Costa Mesa with distinction for more than three decades, beginning when he was a wet-behind-the-ears intern who learned the ins and outs of this city by having breakfast with guys on the street crew. As the city manager for more than two decades, he’s saved our municipal bacon more times than anyone can count.

He’s hired, trained, coached and led an excellent, dedicated and loyal city staff which, with very few exceptions, has done a great job for the city. He’s managed to deal with a new flock of City Council members every couple of years and, for the most part, has kept them from taking our city over the brink. He is acknowledge far and wide as one of the finest city managers in the county, if not the state.

GEOFF WEST

Costa Mesa