to the editor: For years, I enjoy starting my mornings with a double cappuccino and the Los Angeles Times. The impending collapse of democracy around the world has greatly curtailed that daily pleasure, to this day. The “right to repair” consumer movement illustrates how important one-to-one human connections are (“How Repair Cafés turn broken things into a global anti-consumerist community” June 9).
It makes sense that the Repair Cafe movement started in the Netherlands. In 1997, I was visiting friends in Rotterdam when we needed wood for a housing project. I assumed we would go to a Dutch version of Home Depot, but no. We found what we needed at a recycling site for free, where everything from bricks and masonry to drywall and wood was neatly displayed and ready for pickup. Our disposable consumer economy in the United States has a lot to learn.
Philip DiGiacomo, Ojai
