PUBLIC FORUM : OTHER LANDMARKS REMAIN FROM SAINT'S LIFE.

In response to ``Saint's shrine to get home in Sunland,'' Daily News, July 28:

There are many facts not included that tell the real history of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Los Angeles. First, the stone shrine that remains of the orphanage built by Mother Cabrini is not the only shrine that remains of her work in Los Angeles. The orphanage built in 1905 at 1610 N. Hill St. remained at that site and eventually became a day-care center for children of working mothers.

Later in 1908, Mother Cabrini visited the San Fernando Valley and founded a sanitarium for girls suffering from tuberculosis. The sanitarium was built at 7505 Glenoaks Blvd. in Burbank, which became Villa Cabrini in 1927, a Catholic high school for girls, and is now the home of Woodbury University.

A significant landmark of her work still exists there in Burbank. During a visit to Burbank, from November 1916 to the spring of 1917, she purchased the land behind the sanitarium and built a chapel there, atop Mount Raphael. She returned to Chicago in 1917, where she died on Dec. 22.

In 1951, the members of the Italian Catholic Federation began an annual pilgrimage to this shrine built by their patron saint. From 1951 to 1975, ICF members made the pilgrimage up the mountain on foot, praying as their patroness had done.

In 1975, the property upon which the chapel had stood was sold and it was moved down the hill to the grounds of St. Francis Xavier parish at 3801 Scott Road in Burbank. The pilgrimage continued and has continued to the chapel on the first Sunday in December.

In 1994, the ICF built a library adjacent to the chapel containing some of St. Frances' memorabilia.

The second and most important addition to the article is the motivation of St. Frances Cabrini for her work. While the article characterizes her as ``an inspiration to women,'' her impact on humanity is far more universal. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was a true disciple of Jesus Christ who dedicated her life to serving the poor throughout the world, especially in the United States.

- Esther Bonino Bennett

Reseda

Government revolves around Helms

I heartily agree with your Aug. 1 editorial that it is outrageous and preposterous that one senator (Jesse Helms), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, can singlehandedly prevent the 100 members of the Senate from considering a presidential nominee for the post of ambassador to Mexico. And lo and behold, the Republican Senate leadership doesn't have the guts to stand up and be counted!

Maybe Congress should consider amending our country's Declaration of Independence to read, ``A government of Jesse Helms, by Jesse Helms and for Jesse Helms.''

Lou Robins

Van Nuys

Gone, but not forgotten

Emotional thanks to the Daily News and Dennis McCarthy for the July 29 piece about our Asiatic Fleet's demise in 1942 because U.S. top officers wanted it erased from American conscience after Pearl Harbor.

The Asiatic Fleet reunion and memorial in August, although much too late, is cherished by we leftovers who still love America, even though it displayed a sacrificial character defect against a fleet that to its top commanders did not exist.

- J. Sylvia Gooding-Gross

Tujunga

Global warming is complex

A democracy requires informed and thoughtful citizens. A letter in the July 30 Public Forum (``Global warming is a scam'') attests to the need. An example is the letter asserting global warming is a scam because the sun is the only source of heat and nothing is left over for global warming.

The problem is much more complex. It is true that the sun's heat output is more or less constant. However, the Earth both traps and radiates that heat, and the amount absorbed or radiated depends on the composition of the atmosphere and the nature of the surface exposed to the sun. Fortunately, this ratio approximates unity, else we would long have either melted or frozen.

The ratio does shift. When more is radiated, we have global warming. The Earth has experienced it more than once. In both cases these seem to have occurred with a relatively constant output from the sun.

It's cooler in the shade than in the sun. Our Valley has gotten more humid with the increase in plant life and the transpiration of water vapor into the air. It is hotter to walk on a concrete freeway than on an open field. All these illustrate that global temperature involves many factors in addition to the output of the heat source.

There is a legitimate debate going on over whether our current spate of abnormal weather is due to chance or increased levels of heat-trapping gases, like carbon dioxide, consequent to industrialization. The debate is important, and its resolution will affect all our lives, perhaps even our survival. It is important that all citizens take part in that debate on the basis of informed and reasoned considerations. Simplistic misconceptions do not help.

- Arthur Yuwiler

Woodland Hills

`Big sister is watching'

In response to those outraged souls (Public Forum, July 24) who expressed their displeasure and opposition to my heartless and unfeeling criticism of Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick's most recent power play - her highly publicized Neighborhood Codewatch Program:

I wish sincerely to thank everyone for disagreeing with me. I know of no issue in this world that is either totally applauded or met with total disapproval.

But back to the Neighborhood Codewatch fiasco and Chick's tax-paid glorification of the neighborhood snoop: As a 76-year-old WWII combat infantry veteran who grew up during the '30s, this media-supported concept of ``better be good, 'cause big sister is watching,'' reminds me somehow of those many horror stories of Hitler's invisible men who would report their fellow countrymen to the Gestapo for failing to say ``heil Hitler'' or perhaps even for the heinous crime of parking a Volkswagen on a lawn.

I'm not trying to say that Chick is attempting to become all that dictatorial in her relationship with her constituents. Frankly, I doubt very much if she is really aware that it's beginning to look that way.

I'm saying that Chick should scuttle this nonsense and get back to the job we're paying her for: the job of trying to make this city a safer place to live and to help keep our city departments functioning properly.

- Warren V. Geeting

North Hills

Blame Castro's regime

Julian Nava's article (``U.S. embargo just serves to impede reforms in Cuba,'' Viewpoint, July 27) was a good piece of misinformation about Castro's Cuba.

The suffering and privations of the Cuban people is not the result of the U.S. embargo, but the result of failed communist control of the economy. In the ``bad old days,'' as the communists want to portray Cuba in the past, the island was self-sufficient in food production and produced a great percentage of consumer goods.

The reason there is very little food to go around in Castro's Cuba is the result of state-imposed communal farming and state controls of the sources of food production and distribution.

By the way, free education and health care in Cuba for people who were unable to afford it was available long before the communist takeover. If anything, Castro ruined the educational system in Cuba with communist-rewritten history and socialistic garbage. The current health-care system is run by Cuban-Americans, who send bottles of aspirin from the United States to relatives and friends inside Cuba.

The U.S. economic embargo was not created by Washington, but by Castro's policies of aggression and subversion toward his neighbors.

- Salvador del Valle

North Hills

Don't trash the wash

Concerning cityhood and ``Is Tujunga Wash a garbage dump''?

I support cityhood for the San Fernando Valley's communities and for the rest of Los Angeles' many neighborhoods. State Sens. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, and Diane Watson, D-LoIs Angeles, are serving rich special interests by trying to keep all power in downtown L.A. But I am writing because I also support preserving Tujunga Wash.

Contrary to some golf-loving letter writers' opinions, the Kajima Corp.'s Tujunga Wash is not a garbage dump, though some people have treated it that way. Other once-beautiful natural areas, such as the Valley's Sunshine and Lopez Canyons, have received the bulk of L.A. city's garbage in recent years, thanks to our shortsighted, uncaring City Council.

Now that there are hardly any privately owned natural areas left in the city, and precious few public parklands, the council has come to its senses and stopped the conversion of Tujunga Wash from a wildlife reserve to a natural golf course, and with good reason. The wash serves as a natural bridge between the public parklands in the Shadow Hills/Verdugo Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains. A golf course is totally inappropriate for the wash.

Where the golf course belongs is on top of the garbage in the now-closed Lopez Canyon dump, a mere two miles away. The city has already trashed Lopez Canyon. Let's put golfers on this scenic mountaintop, as has been done successfully at Brentwood's Mountaingate and Glendale's Scholl Canyon dumps.

Let the Mountains Conservancy buy Tujunga Wash, and the City Council can trade Lopez Canyon to the golf course backers as part of the deal. Everybody will get what they want.

And if people hate the trash some have tossed into Tujunga Wash, they should join us environmentalists in our cleanup later this summer.

And soon, maybe, we can all work together to clean out the government of the city of L.A., too. The sooner the better.

- Rex Frankel

Westchester