Graffiti is plain ugly, everybody knows that ... in fact, this week it's been talk of the town ... or at least the bloggers that inhabit the Napa Valley Register's Web site.

California has a seemingly endless number of fascinating nooks and crannies, places where human history touched down for just a second or where some natural feature is the only one of its kind — or spots where the natural and the historical came together to make a location memorable, like the James Dean Tree near Cholame, Captain Jack‘s Stronghold near Tule Lake or Scotty‘s Castle in Death Valley.

Recently you ran three articles on a couple of our local young people who were arrested for tagging. There was much comment in the blogs concerning these two, and quite a response from one of the perpetrators. There was much defensiveness and no remorse displayed.

The Summer Olympics started in Beijing on Friday, and I’m having some trouble getting excited about the spectacle this time around ... too many pro athletes, too many endorsement deals and too many sports that have passed their prime.

Even with the price of gas easing off a bit in recent weeks, these are tight times.

Dear editor, praise God; unlikely people can wake up! Former White House Press Secretary and Bush loyalist, Scott McClellan, in a just-released book, confesses that instead of effective and honest government, Americans were subjected by the Bush administration to a “permanent campaign” that was “all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage” and that Bush relied on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war.

Dear editor, I was stunned to hear that the Napa County Supervisors decided not to place the new tax on the ballot for road repairs.

Yesterday the proposed election for a transportation tax died a quiet death in the Board of Supervisors chambers. I was disappointed because I would like to see the roads fixed, and I do not believe they will be fixed without one in any reasonable time frame, but I agree it was the right decision. Taxpayers are scared right now for a lot of reasons, and I think the final blow was our Governor proposing the 1 percent state sales tax.

Proposition 8, the "Limit on Marriage, Constitutional Amendment," on the November ballot, calls for an amendment to the state constitution, declaring that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

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