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Letters to the Editor: A note from ink-stained wretches

Inky wretches RSVP to dead man’s party

Another paper bites the dust?

Say it isn’t so, Joe!

My husband and I (yes, we’re transplants) moved here from New York two years ago, to get away from the dire news business.

But it’s hard when publishing is your business, too. We’re both ink-stained wretches who’ve come in from the cold. Literally.

I’m a freelance writer, and my husband is a former New York Times editor who saw the writing on the old building’s wall.

So we fled the Northeast and its messy winters.

The Tucson Citizen’s possible demise hits in the heart like a zombie’s death-nail.

Not that we don’t “get it.” Everyone’s hurting, hey, and why should another little paper be an exception?

Because it’s important.

And kids should learn early that information is not just something to swiftly glance at on a teeny-weeny screen.

It should be savored, read slowly and maybe even reread for better comprehension.

Even if it’s a dinosaur in this anything-goes tech generation.

Just remember: Some Luddites are still out there struggling to load cell phone numbers.

The Tucson Citizen deserves a break. We all do.

Keep on keeping on.

Naomi Serviss

spa writer / consultant

Lifelong smoking habit becomes too taxing

OK. You win. I will finally have to admit defeat. After 61 years of smoking cigarettes, I will finally be priced out of the market.

With the new taxes imposed by our “Grand Poobah of Change,” the price of cigarettes has reached the limit of my financial abilities.

For anti-smokers who might read this, I ask that you don’t respond. I admit you were right all along.

There is no excuse and no redeeming qualities associated with smoking. I know, because I’ve used them all.

I finally had to see a doctor for the first time in 15 years. She put me in the hospital for four days.

I was eventually seen by a multitude of doctors who were determined to find something wrong they could connect to my careless lifestyle.

Endless blood tests, chest X-rays, at least two MRIs, poked, prodded and inspected for four days.

They sent me home with a prescription for some stomach pills. They help. But so did Tums or Zantac.

Sorry to be such a burden on the medical health community.

I started smoking full time when I was about 12, and on April 1, I turned 73.

I have cigarettes with my coffee in the morning and cigarettes with my beer in the evening, and I really enjoyed that.

I always had an exemplary attendance record when I worked.

In fact, my record was better than the guys who belonged to gymnasiums and jogged for recreation.

As I said, please do not respond to this letter, as you are the winners and I admit that.

When I finish smoking the 18 cartons of cigarettes I bought prior to the new increase, I, too, will quit smoking and buying cigarettes.

Like you, I hope everybody quits smoking. But my reasons probably differ from yours.

I will be happy when you all get to share the tax burden I have endured for so many years.

They will still need that tax money, and now we can all share it equally.

Loren W. Stevens

Need house of justice for tenants rights

My mom and I rented a house in midtown for two years.

Jan. 10, my landlord asked to inspect it because we had been there a long time.

I was told the house looked OK. I also was told the new tenant in the adjacent guest house would do yardwork and fix things.

In late January, my landlord gave me 30 days’ notice, saying his daughter wants to move into the house. My move-out date was March 1.

Feb. 27, my landlord entered the house (saying he “didn’t know what was going on”).

My sister and brother were helping me move and clean out the house.

I received a refund check for $235, even though I had given this landlord a security deposit of $950 in September 2006.

In 2007, he had rented the guest house to two people who ransacked the place and left after three weeks.

I found a box full of mail, IDs, Social Security cards, etc.

The landlord’s wife took the box and I was told things would be taken care of.

I don’t know if anything ever was reported to the police or what happened to the box.

We had to share a mailbox with these guest house tenants, with one key, and I lost a box of checks and a payroll check, which was reissued to me.

I changed our bank accounts and had mail delivered to family members.

I apprised my landlord of what was going on.

But after the guest house pair left, I received numerous calls from Home Depot, cash advance places and Target, asking if I knew where these people were.

A few months later, three men came knocking on my door looking for the man. I was at work, and I felt my mother was at risk.

I informed my landlord, but he never fixed things – not the malfunctioning dishwasher or the dismantled cooler.

What about some justice for Arizona tenants?

Theresa Bermudez

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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