My name is Dee Gaylord, and I read with interest that there are plans for a new Renaissance faire in Oregon. Well and good; it is nice to know that people are enjoying that sort of family-friendly venue.

However, in your article, it said that there are "no faires in the Northwest." This rather surprised me. I work for the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire, in Kings Valley. This faire has been in existence for 11 years. It has, as I remember, an attendance of about 20,000 (give or take a few thousand), and it has won awards from the Oregon Festivals and Events Association as well as the International Festival and Event Association.

We have performers, vendors and a joust. These people come from all over the United States. We even have one or two of our "guilds" (working groups of Shrewsbury), that are located out of state. We have attendance of people from several countries, as guests.

As I recall, I have seen write-ups of our faire in your newspaper, as well as our advertising. Therefore, I really would appreciate it if it were acknowledged that there is a renaissance faire in the Northwest!

As one of the people who helps make it happen, I would like to invite you to see us in action Sept. 8 and 9 in Kings Valley. (See www.shrewfaire.com)

Dee Gaylord

(aka Cat Lacemaker)

Lebanon

Letter about climate change error-filled

Given the importance of the global warming problem, it is important to get the facts correct. In his March 22 letter, ("Danes don't buy that warming hype"), Robert Gutierrez does Gazette-Times readers a disservice by repeating misinformation and outright errors about Earth's climate history.

Mr. Gutierrez made much of the fact that climate is cyclic. This is old news - we have known about climate cycles for a long time. In fact, our studies of climate cycles tens to hundreds of million years ago tell us that high levels (much higher than today) of greenhouse gases were associated with times when the polar ice sheets melted and the Earth was quite a bit warmer than today.

The important question now is if human activities are causing the Earth to warm now more than it would otherwise because of human activities.

The answer from an overwhelming majority of the scientific community is yes. And, because the Earth does not respond immediately, we have not felt the full impact yet.

Mr. Gutierrez also claimed that, "ice core samples show that there has been 10 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere than today without any temperature change."

As a scientist who studies greenhouse gases in ice core samples, I can say categorically that no ice core record of atmospheric CO2 shows any such thing.

The most recent long records of CO2 from ice cores, published in the journal Science in 2005, show that the highest levels of CO2 recorded in the last 650,000 years are occurring right now.

Edward Brook

Corvallis

Is truth about UFOs finally escaping?

Is the UFO cover-up in the Western world beginning to unravel? Perhaps so, with the Internet publication by the French space agency of 1,650 of their UFO cases containing some 6,000 individual reports (March 24, Gazette-Times).

Nearly a quarter of the cases "are known as Category D - meaning that in spite of good data and witnesses, the mysterious sightings remain inexplicable," according to the BBC news of Paris. Their Web site quickly crashed.

Moreover, UFO sightings worldwide the past few months, by small numbers of persons, are at a high pitch.

The O'Hare Airport case that became known in January was significant because the saucer-shaped craft that hovered over a runway and then zoomed away was viewed by several United employees - including pilots.

As it zoomed upward, it left a hole in the clouds. So how did authorities try to dismiss it? By saying it was all a "weather phenomenon"!

Then there's the recent disclosure by ex-governor Fife Symington of Arizona that he had seen the huge object that slowly passed over the Phoenix area around

8 p.m. on March 13, 1997, which hundreds if not thousands viewed.

The newspapers left it alone until June, after which Gov. Symington staged a press conference in which the event was marginalized by trotting out a man dressed in an alien outfit; the mystery was declared solved.

What with all the fallout from our foreign policy crafted by neocons, it's interesting that the UFO phenomenon has managed to find some news space.

Jim Deardorff

Corvallis

Child's view of war among the clearest

On March 20, Mathew Popowski, a fifth-grader at Adams Elementary School, wrote that spending $2 billion each week on the war in Iraq is ridiculous. It's not just ridiculous; it's actually illegal, immoral and insane!

This young person realizes that social and economic justice is the necessary foundation for a peaceful culture, and we will not have peace unless we invest in research, development and implementation of nonviolent solutions to many of our own domestic problems. We will not have peace until we change our national priorities and value the pursuit of peace, realizing that war - our largest and most expensive tool of foreign policy - does not work.

Mathew and other youth concerned about creating peace might consider looking at the student peace alliance at www.

thepeacealliance.org to find out more about a citizens' campaign to create a National Department of Peace. If the youth of America want to have a peaceful world, it looks like we will all have to work together to make sense, to make peace and to make history.

War itself is ridiculous.

Valerie White

Corvallis