CJ: Pinched at the pump 

Feeling it in Alaska
Due to higher fuel prices of about $1.00 per gallon higher over the past six months, I eat out less often, that includes the local coffee shops or driving three to five miles to take my dog out for her daily hike.  I plan my driving carefully, what roads to take that I don't have to stop as often, get the mail and groceries, other stores in one trip. Living in Alaska, we also heat out homes with fuel oil presently at $2.41 per gallon.  I keep the heat down low when I'm not at home, I turn off the heat if the outside temperature is at least 50 degrees. In speaking with my friends, they are doing about the same. I noticed that the elderly lady that lives across the street has been using her wood stove more often to heat her home.  I feel for those that cannot absorb the cost of higher fuel prices as I can. I live on an island in the Gulf of Alaska, other smaller villages have much higher cost that we here on Kodiak Island and they do not have the ability to absorb the cost. It's time for America to quit thinking about an energy change, it's time to respond and take action on alternative transportation, heating and electrical power sources.
--Hal Long, Kodiak, Alaska

It's closing schools
Currently where I live in Seattle there is a proposal to change the entire workings of our 20 year old school-choice system to keep children in their neighborhood schools and take away their choices for schooling.  When the parents started asking questions it keeps going back to the extraordinary cost of busing the students to school each day due to the rise in gas prices.  It is sickening to me to think that my daughter may have to go to our neighborhood school which does not provide the Art, Drama, Social skills, and music classes that her current school has due to gas issues. One of the options that the city is seriously considering is to let all middle through high school students take public transportation to school at the same time all the adults are trying to get to work. Anyone see any problems with that idea?
--Cate, Seattle Wash.

Keeping it in perspective
Not a bit! It is still cheaper, adjusted for inflation, than it was fifty years ago when its price did matter to me. I look at most prices today as incredibly cheap considering what we get for what we pay. The quality, the quantities, the choices, the utility, it is only from ignorance that people complain today.
--Major Michael B. Combs, USAF Retired, Gualala, Calif.

Hard on truckers
Every article I read only talks of the effects on everyone lives with gasoline.  What about the trucking industry, who by the way, handles 92 percent of the nations goods and the price of diesel fuel being 32 cents higher, per gallon, than regular unleaded.  What do you think it has done to our companies, the family owned and operated trucking companies bringing you your Pepsi products and Miller beer?  We fuel 2-3 times per week, with an average of 184 gallons each for each tractor, each fill up and they get around 6.4 miles per gallon.  If you want a reality story, talk writing about the effects the diesel fuel will eventually have on the economy when everything transported by truck will cost you a lot more than what you are presently paying.  Your electric bill and price of tires and plastic will go up for production and your staple items will be more costly.  Diesel fuel is less costly type of fuel, because it takes less to refine, which gasoline takes more to refine.  Diesel fuel has historically been 22-30 cents cheaper than your regular gasoline and now we are taking hits of 32-39 cents more a gallon than gasoline.  Where is the justice in having the trucking companies handle all the cost of this? We have written our Congressmen and Senators and Reps. They talk about it, but no action.
--Susan Williams, West Chester, Ohio

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