Editor:

I love you guys. The Journal covers the Humboldt beat wonderfully, from hot headlines to deep-digging investigations to whimsical features that are really about us. It even has the best ads.

But nobody’s perfect. I have to agree with Mark Letlow’s letter (“Mailbox,” May 14). Is the foul language supposed to be sophisticated? Bold? Renegade? It usually strikes me as crass and shallow. Yeah, I can dish it out with the best of ’em, but not for major public presentation. Just not appropriate.

If the Journal aspires to be a paper for all the county, a little more sensitivity to the many of all persuasions who find rank language offensive would be a positive development.

I still love you.

Susan Nolan, McKinleyville

Editor:

Nice letter from Mark Letlow last issue regarding the use of profanity in your rag (“Mailbox,” May 14). But why disguise it? Why not just leave it out? Many kids and so-called adults have overused, in everyday conversation, those seven words George Carlin made so famously funny years ago, seemingly because they are not intelligent enough to use proper grammar to make their point. To see it in your columns is, well, juvenile. There is a place and time for that. Not in a weekly available to everyone, young and old, to pick up and read.

But then, after reading Mark’s letter, there it is from the editor himself in closing his column. The mighty Hank Sims steps to the plate, spits a disgusting wad of chaw, scratches his package and strikes out with eyes wide shut. Bad form, Hank. You may be held in regard by free speech zealots for your edgy but lame sign-off, but to us grownups it’s low class.

And while I’m on a roll, here, I’d like to comment on your take on the two punks who tried to pull a pot rip-off and then did a Thelma and Louise off a ravine near Willow Creek. Two words, Hank: death wish. Bullet proof vests, assault rifles, firing at law enforcement and no attempt to slow down after blown tires? Smells like going out in a blaze of glory to me. And you say “somehow” they got shot in the head? The survivor told police — oh, excuse me, “allegedly” told police — that he attempted to kill himself. The other managed to pull it off.

And to you, Hank, this a strange case? No-brainer.

Mike and Melody Sloyer, Willow Creek

Ed. note: Assumptions are for ass-holes, as Felix Unger once tried to say. Last Tuesday, the survivor — 19-year-old Brian Fiore of Antioch — was booked into the Humboldt County jail and charged with the murder of his partner, 21-year-old local resident David Fields.

Now your gruesome pun doesn’t quite work so well, eh?

Sweet Spot:* Susan Nolan pulls off this feature’s titular trick — sweet, not cloying. She wins a Bon Boniere sundae for sending our favorite letter of the week.*