Why Kill Bobcats?

I don’t understand why the Fish and Game Department in New Hampshire is allowing so-called sportsmen to kill a species on the verge of extinction (the bobcat).

Allowing the hunters to kill an animal for a trophy is the name of your game. It may give you job security. You may bring in hunting permit revenue.

The public in New Hampshire knows what you are doing. The people of the state are against this onslaught of cruelty and cowardly acts.

Dusty Hunt

Claremont

Easter Hunt at Its Best

My daughter’s neighbors in South Portland, Maine, hosts an Easter egg hunt each year for the dozen children in their neighborhood. Children’s ages range from toddlers through about middle school— the older ones participating as much as the younger ones in this annual event.

Parents fill plastic eggs with candies, balloons, bouncy balls, etc. — each child has a designated color and his or her initial on the plastic egg — then hide eggs in the front lawns of about four homes central to the neighborhood. To begin the event,  children sit on a porch front for a group picture, then are turned loose for a hunt that lasts about 30 minutes.  During the end of the hunt, when some children have not found all of their eggs, other children who’ve seen the appropriate colors help their neighbors find those last few eggs.  Parents stay out on the road, enjoying the hunt and just being neighbors. 

I was impressed with the friendliness and cooperation among all.  It was America at its best.  

Anne Peyton

South Strafford

The Constitutional Weapon

As many of the recent Forum letters concerning Sen. Kelly Ayotte have shown, it’s only when those on the left want to use it as a weapon that they even bother to pretend to care what the Constitution says. When their own darlings engage in the same behavior, that document assumes its usual roles as a mere list of suggestions and an antiquated impediment to “progress.”

Anthony Stimson

Lebanon

Sen. Ayotte’s Inaction

I listened today on the car radio to our Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s rationale for standing with the Senate majority and refusing any action on President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  Sticking with the Republican script, she solemnly intoned the need to “hear the people’s voice” in this important matter. I am confused. I thought we elected Sen. Ayotte to be our voice. I thought that was the way the Constitution intended for our representative democracy to work. Has Sen. Ayotte retired on the job, drawing a salary but refusing to speak for her constituents?  Or does she believe that she is speaking for us, that we prefer an eight member court incapable of deciding the nation’s most important judicial issues?  Don’t we have enough of dysfunctional failure to do the nation’s work in our current Congress? Is paralysis the desired method of operation for all three branches of our government?  Who speaks for us?  I hope readers who care about any of this will speak out loudly and clearly come November, when a citizen’s direct voice can be heard.

Dodd Stacy

Etna

Thanks for the Support

The Woodstock Area Job Bank (WAJB) board of directors is grateful to the community for supporting our important job referral service in its 42nd year. At recent town meetings, the voters of Woodstock, Hartland, Reading, Bridgewater, Pomfret, and Barnard again approved our requested town appropriations, thereby securing 22.5 percent of our annual budget. Free to its users, the WAJB employs office director Elizabeth Craib to help connect individuals seeking work with individuals and businesses seeking workers and volunteers. We offer a host of methods to make these community connections: an interactive website, weekly email blasts of news on the employment front, a sophisticated data base, phone contact, email communication, and office visits.

We thank the generous individuals who responded to our 2015 annual fundraising campaign and the foundations and organizations whose support is vital to us such as the Byrne Foundation, Glad Rags, the Woodstock Rotary and the Rockefeller Foundation. We thank those who use us and look forward to meeting new users. We appreciate the community’s positive, encouraging feedback about our service.

Visit the WAJB at www.WoodstockJobBank.org. Email Elizabeth Craib at info@woodstockjobbank.org, or call her between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays to fill your employment needs.

Sara Norcross

WAJB Board President

Woodstock