To the editor: For years, I’ve enjoyed starting my mornings with a double cappuccino and the Los Angeles Times. The looming collapse of democracy worldwide has greatly reduced that daily pleasure, until today. The “right to repair” consumer movement illustrates just how important one-on-one human connections are (“How Repair Cafes turn broken stuff into a global anticonsumerist community,” June 9).
It makes sense that the Repair Cafe movement began in the Netherlands. In 1997, I was visiting friends in Rotterdam when we needed some lumber for a home project. I assumed we would go to a Dutch version of Home Depot, but no. We found what was needed at a recycling site free of charge, where everything from bricks and masonry to drywall and lumber was neatly displayed and ready for pick-up. Our disposable consumer economy in America has a lot to learn.
Philip DiGiacomo, Ojai
