Spending three nights in Morro Bay, as a tourist from Germany, I came across the latest New Times edition. What a surprise, no offense intended, to find, in a local paper like this, two very readable pieces: One was the very thoughtful and insightful article by Chris McGuinness ("Is homelessness a crime?").

So, when SLO Police Chief Deanna Cantrell is quoted as saying: "It's not illegal for ... homeless people to hang out with each other... ," it's only fair to say, as attorney Eric Tars puts it, that criminalizing those people "is a terrible policy, because you are trying to use the criminal justice system to address a social failing." I couldn't agree more.

The opinion piece on race ("Vote") just touched my heart. I wasn't aware of just how hurting the race issue in this beautiful country still is. It was well written by Anonymous, and, alas, it's easy to see why this piece was published anonymously. Only, for the sake of transparency, when an article in Germany gets published anonymously, the editor adds the note: "Name of author known to editor." Thank you very much for these two pieces.

Michael Scharenberg

Germany