Dear Editor,
    Hooray for the Workers Defense Project [“Victories for Living Wages,” News, Nov. 30]! I just wish they could have aimed higher. Try living on $11 an hour, Mr. Mayor and council members. In the heat. While your boss takes liberties with your safety. And don't get sick, as you will not get paid. And if it rains, stay home without pay. As quoted in your story: "Development-minded folks … say that even the 1% increase suggested by WDP would amount, using HID Global construction as a marker, to $300,000." So? Out of how many millions on the same project? Mayor Lee Leffingwell, worried about contractors scraping by? F them! Your misplaced concern does not give anyone the right to exploit people on my dime. Anyhow, Mr. Mayor, don't you know a competent bid is made with a healthy profit margin factored in, plus cost overruns when the client is too dense to read the contract? To do otherwise is to quickly fail in the construction game. This baloney about "takers" feeding at the public trough while exploiting the poor and vulnerable with my money needs to stop! It is wrong! Mayor Leffingwell, you are heartless, and I pity you when you meet your maker.

Dear Editor,
    Saturday morning, driving my family home from breakfast at Guero’s, I turned onto Riverside Drive from South First, heading west. Two guys were on bicycles in front of us, riding side by side, blocking the entire road. Trying to be a nice guy and a considerate driver, I stayed back and didn’t crowd them. I didn’t honk my horn or flash my lights. I didn’t yell out the window or shake my fist, even though the guys were blocking all traffic and not even biking with any real purpose; they were slowly pedaling and having a conversation. We kept our distance, followed them past the dog park, through the roundabout in front of the Events Center, and down the rest of Riverside to Lamar. As the guys moved out of the street to cross over the pedestrian bridge, one of the guys turned to face us … flipped me off … and yelled at us to f*@k off!
    Dude, why would you act this way? What on Earth would compel you to be a complete jerk, even though you were absolutely in the wrong? Don’t you realize this is exactly the kind of behavior that infuriates drivers and makes it more dangerous for every bicyclist on the road? It was obvious from your demeanor that you were not biking for fun or fitness; you wer simply using your bike as a vehicle to start fights. Please do everyone a favor: Get down off your 10-speed and go back to picking fights in bars. Bicyclists throughout Austin will be safer for it.

Dear Editor,
    Re: "In the Blind" [Food, Nov. 30]: John Wootters – Texan, hunter, and author – likened the time spent waiting for deer as a "psychedelic experience." The hunter's stillness and quietude spins reels and reels of thought not otherwise searched. And no wonder. This is where one answers the question: What does it take to live?
    That answer is: we kill.
    Artists contemplate the whys of living in song, in motion picture, on stage, and in art. But anyone can venture beyond contemplation for the price of a license, a hunter education course, a pawn-shop rifle, and some time at the range. No third-person drama, no cartoon hysteria, no kidding yourself.
    There's a library out there. Perhaps we should walk out into it, letting fear be our guide.