Phoning Home for a Reality Check

I read, with utter disbelief, about Mary Ann Hogan’s “despair� over the loss of her Area Code. (“First Person, Sept. 2). Can Hogan be so unaware of the real and traumatic losses suffered by people every day--not only in the Bay Area, but all over this country and this planet?

I will spare you and your readers my opinion of someone who develops a profound emotional attachment to a phone number. But I must point out that beneath her sentimental claptrap, there is an underlying meanness: She wants all the people who have come into her area during the past three generations--whether by birth, job transfer, migration or immigration--�to go home.� Can she be so far gone as not to realize that they are home?

NORMAN BORISOFF

Santa Monica