Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    I am of the opinion after working in the health care industry with our elders that day programs which allow for care during the day and the ability to return home to families in the evening is one of the most compassionate choices we can make in our elder care options. It is through respect, reverence, and patience of our elders that we learn the most about our own humanity. They are the greatest teachers we will have the opportunity to meet, and the decisions we as a nation have made about supply safety and institutional care environments have stolen elderhood from our grandparents. It is time we rethink the health care options for our elderly. We could solve many challenges related to the youth of America and their need for attention, support, and love with programs that simply allow for interaction between children and seniors. There are nursing homes with kindergarten programs taking place within their walls, assisted living with employee child care, and adult day centers with summer programs that bring in more than 130 children to interact with their members.
    So I truly enjoyed noticing this year's “Best of Austin” [Oct. 14] and seeing Mike’s Place highlighted as Best Caregiver Respite in Austin. I wanted to let your readers know about the other amazing caregiver respite options besides the wonderful program at Mike's Place. Adult day centers and respite groups are underfunded and greatly unknown to many caregivers. Their services range from free half-day programs once a week to affordable or Medicaid-funded daily care up to five days a week. They specialize in Alzheimer's and dementia care as well as medical supervision for frail elders. Programs from Austin Groups for the Elderly like the Elderhaven Adult Day Centers are state licensed and can do medication management and toileting assistance. Many of the respite programs with Greater Austin CARES offer book clubs and support for people who are living with the first stage of Alzheimer's. These programs are often volunteer-run and financially strapped, but the care, compassion, and hope they offer families is beyond measure.

Dear Editor,
    I'm writing in support of Philip Russell's second letter and against the Chronicle's second editorial counterargument ("Postmarks," Oct. 28) about county bond Proposition 1. Russell has given us the basics on how he got his figure of 96% for the portion of Proposition 1 funds that would be dedicated to road projects. In so doing, he tentatively rebuts the Chronicle's earlier math-less claim ("Postmarks," Oct. 21) that "many" of the projects in Proposition 1 "include bike and pedestrian aspects." The new Chronicle editorial counterargument now applies the label "tendentious math" without any substantiation backing that label, after the earlier Chronicle counterargument tried to reduce the 96% by throwing in Proposition 2, which is a different proposition and thus is irrelevant to what Russell originally asserted. The rest of the Chronicle's latest counterargument is also weak. Paying to support rural county greenery, outside the city limits, differs from paying to support rural county asphalt, outside the city limits. The greenery is there now. The prospective new asphalt isn't. Again, they're two different propositions, not one, and if they're somehow supposed to be a package, then somebody needs to have combined them into the same proposition. For disclosure purposes, I'm in the tiny category of fiscally conservative no-growthers who are averse to throwing away the investment already made by the city in the water treatment plant. As such, I cringe at more budget-stretching expansionist spending and at the Chronicle's rationale implicitly suggesting urban expansion (hence rural asphalting) to be inexorably inevitable. Liberals, conservatives, and others who don't at least occasionally recontemplate issues of growth-mania, specifically whether growth is inevitable or just the opposite (thinking globally), are wearing ecological blinders (misacting locally).

Dear Editor,
    Re: “'Chronicle' Endorsements and Election Info” [News, Oct. 28]: The Chronicle takes its chamber of commerce membership very seriously insofar as it has never seen a road bond proposal it didn't enthusiastically support. With the local media larded with messages that voters must support Travis County bonds and debate stifled (where is the Chronicle's column opposing Proposition 1?) and with some shadowy political action committee spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to send out misleading glossy marketing literature designed to appeal to complete imbeciles (See this cute little girl next to a babbling brook? She will die if you don't support Prop. 1.), there is little chance that the bond proposals won't pass. Nevertheless, I ask Austin voters to think for themselves before voting. If these bond proposals are such a good idea, why do they need a secretly funded PAC to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars manipulating voters? And where is this money coming from, anyway? Travis County property taxes (just increased!) are already higher than in city of Austin. If you live in Austin, exactly what services does Travis County provide, anyway? Oh yeah, they collect taxes! The truth of the matter is that the Prop. 1 roadway projects will do nothing to relieve congestion in Austin. Their sole purpose is to promote sprawl, and they will actually increase congestion on Austin roadways. That this is being proposed at a time when global-warming influenced drought and heat waves threaten to turn this entire region into a desert is beyond belief. The people behind this effort will do literally anything to keep making money the traditional way – by robbing taxpayers.
    It doesn't make sense to ask Austin voters to pay for roads outside city limits that will increase congestion on Austin roads and lessen our quality of life. Just say no.

   [Editor's note: For the record, The Austin Chronicle is not a member of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.]

Dear Editor,
    Mick Vann's article about barbacoa [“Barbacoa Smackdown,” Food, Oct. 28] had me smelling the cabeza roasting in Dave Resendez's oven in the late Seventies at the Back Door Club behind Cisco's. Yum!
    La Michoacana Meat Market is my current fave, but now I have some new ones to try. Thanks, Mick!