Mailbag: Knots of love is devoted to helping children

On behalf of the Knots of Love volunteers, I would like to clarify some facts about our yarn-bombing project recently covered by your newspaper (“Yarn bombing delivers colorful message,” Aug. 13).

We are a nonprofit that survives solely on the beneficence of everyday people, both in monetary gifts and donated caps. Some interpreted our yarn-bombing project at The Lab Anti-Mall as a waste of valuable time and money that could have been better spent working toward our mission of creating caps and neonatal ICU blankets.

The “bombing” project was meant to garner more awareness for our charity, thus allowing us to donate more caps to cancer patients and babies in neonatal units across the nation.

We used only inexpensive yarn, which we do not ever use on caps or blankets for our precious recipients. This project also gave the ladies the special bonding that comes from a shared endeavor. It created interest in our cause and brought the need for warmth, love and support for cancer patients to the forefront of the minds of shoppers and passersby.

Finally, rather than inhibit the number of caps we donated, it seemed to increase during that time period. Inasmuch as less than 10 women worked on the project, our hundreds of cap-makers nationwide were still able to donate more than 4,453 caps in the month of August while decorating the LAB.

Christine Fabiani

Founder and CEO of Knots of Love

Costa Mesa

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Consistent conservatism

While Jamie Dow’s rebuttal (“Mailbag: Climate-change science is immune to politics,” Sept. 3) to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s ranting on climate change science was perhaps the most articulate and well-explained I have read, I still feel the need to add a few comments.

Rohrabacher’s insistence on taking sides on this issue calls to my mind the sides that similarly inclined conservatives have taken for centuries. You can go back to the time of Galileo when conservatives denounced his theories that the sun, not the earth, was the center of our solar system. And we’re all familiar how the same narrow-minded folks felt about the writings of Charles Darwin.

Of course conservatives do not limit their narrow-minded views to science alone. Conservatives opposed American independence from Britain. Conservatives opposed the abolition of slavery. Conservatives opposed women’s suffrage. Conservatives opposed child-labor laws. Conservatives opposed food-and-drug regulations.

Conservatives opposed (and still do) minimum-wage laws. Conservatives opposed workmen’s compensation. Conservatives opposed regulating Wall Street bankers. Conservatives opposed the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Rights Act. Conservatives opposed (and still do) Social Security and Medicare. Conservatives opposed (and still do) sensible laws on guns. Conservatives continue to rail against same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to make decisions about her body.

Conservatives have opposed, and by their nature always will, any progress that promises to improve life in our society. I can’t think of a single major issue in the past 200 years when conservatives were ever on the side of progress, finding solutions to our problems and moving forward.

Lenard Davis

Newport Beach