California’s Faded Image

We are spoiled brats. We should be ashamed of ourselves. As pointed out in your article (“California’s Image: Fad to a Funk,” Dec. 19), we’ve forgotten how lucky we are to live in this great state of California and have started whining to the rest of the nation (which indeed glories in our misfortunes) that we’ve lost our luster.

Our problems are deep ones--that is undeniable. They are social, economic and environmental, and they are severe. But there is a flip side and this is what we’ve forgotten. There is the beauty of the land, the temperance of the climate and the abiding goodness of the majority of our citizens, who do not engage in rape, murder and mayhem.

I remember I used to tell my friends back East that each morning in California I woke up with a joyous, positive, wonderful feeling that anything was possible. Then, somewhere along the line, that feeling disappeared.

But a strange thing happened a few weeks ago and to this day I don’t know why. Amid all the bad economic news, the scores of drive-by shootings, the shaking of the Earth, the feeling slowly started coming back. There is a lot here that is good, I realized, a lot that can be saved if we only work hard enough at it.

If no state leader will step forth and speak for our state, then I, with the small voice of one lowly citizen, will stand up and say we must quit our destructive whining and bad-mouthing, we must begin to stress the positive, of which there is so much. And when that happens a growing spirit will develop, a long-forgotten pride will return, and they will give us the impetus to begin to address our problems and truly work to solve them.

LAURA COBURN

Sherman Oaks