Dartmouth Threatens Neighborhood
In 1997, Dartmouth College proposed building Scully-Fahey field abutting the Tyler Road neighborhood. The Planning Board did not approve the project until it was relocated away from the homes to protect the character of the neighborhood.
According to Dartmouth, a proposed facility for the same site would be the largest freestanding athletics building in the Ivy League, a massive industrial building large enough and tall enough to warehouse a Boeing 747. Dartmouth must relocate this project because, as proposed, it would result in extreme, permanent damage to the neighborhood.
If Dartmouth’s pursuit of athletic competitiveness is paramount, why not locate the facility at the heart of the campus? The Dartmouth Green is more than twice the size of the proposed lot and surrounded by Dartmouth buildings instead of neighborhood homes.
This new facility on the green could provide an excellent rain venue for commencements and fantastic space for presidential candidates’ town halls. The college could enjoy the biggest and best Jumbotron in the Ivies. Imagine, a gigantic state-of-the-art 60-foot-high screen scrolling continuous highlights of Dartmouth sports across all four sides of the new building’s exterior. This is Big Green Sports!
Furthermore, the green was frequently used for athletic activities during its early days. Cricket was played on the green in the 18th century and football by the 1820s. Dartmouth’s first intercollegiate matches in baseball (1866), track and field (1875), football (1881), and tennis (1884) all took place on the green. Dartmouth’s first gymnasium (Bissell Gymnasium) was built on the southeast corner of the green in 1866.
Build Dartmouth’s proposed indoor practice facility on the green? What a preposterous idea! The green is magnificent and Dartmouth should protect it forever. Hanover neighborhoods are also magnificent and the Planning Board should protect them forever. Dartmouth can and should relocate this project.
To view a rendering of the proposal, go to relocatedartmouthipf.wordpress.com. Concerned Hanover citizens can also attend the Planning Board meeting, Tuesday, June 7, 7:30 p.m.
John Colligan
Hanover
Ego and an Art Project
The Monday article headlined “A Sense of Gesture” is shameful pandering to ego. There is no manmade object supposedly disguised as art that justifies despoiling a piece of Vermont landscape. If the sculptor wants to create this sculpture, let him place it on his own property and not inflict it on the public for the sake of his ego.
Paul Tierney
Norwich
Who Are the Real Liars?
Donald Trump is a smart man with a very large ego. Therefore it is difficult to judge when his comments are made with calculation versus when his mouth has run ahead of his head. With that said, it is interesting to see how his opponents use his comments to disparage him. I include in that group the Valley News, which chose to rerun The Washington Post editorial titled “Lies, Damn Lies, Counting Trump’s False Claims.”
In the entire essay, the Post came up with only one supposedly false claim, regarding his donations to veteran causes, which they managed to triple count. Indeed, to fill up the space, they needed to include a full paragraph related to Trump’s alignment with conspiracy theories . . . interesting perhaps, but unrelated to allegations of lying.
Why is this all worth noting? It seems obvious: The press wants to distract from the lies of the other candidate, one Hillary Clinton. With Trump, we have some disagreement over the timing of when he pledged versus actually gave a donation, papering over the fact that he ultimately did give to veteran causes.
Compare this with Clinton, whose shifting stories about her email have been shown to be tangibly false. Correspondence now reveals she used a private server not merely for convenience, but to avoid FOIA requests by the American people. A more telling example: her lies to the families of Americans killed in Benghazi, in order to maintain a political narrative, compounded by the incredibly malicious act of labeling those families themselves liars, after they called her out. Talk about a pantsuit-on-fire!
My purpose in writing is not to defend Trump nor attack Clinton. Rather it is to call out the Post, and the Valley News, for joining in the campaign slander with their opinions and headlines.
Tim Dreisbach
South Royalton
Trump, Bull and Hogwash
I’ve always believed that you can often fool someone much younger, and you can often fool someone much older, but you can’t often fool a member of your own sex of the same approximate age. A related adage: “It takes one to know one.”
There’s a short phrase that cannot be spoken in polite company nor printed in any decent news medium. In my youth at a boy’s school, the word was used pejoratively when it appeared that one of our number was stretching the truth or exaggerating his accomplishments in sports or other pursuits. It was not a word one wanted applied to oneself. Like all the classic expletives, the word endures to this day. Its root (and first syllable) is the male of the bovine species. You get the picture. Sometimes the word “artist” is appended.
Mr. Trump is the classic embodiment of this word and its derivatives, and what puzzles me is that he seems not to care that countless numbers of American males (excluding his worshippers, of course) would apply that term to him. I do not in any way mean to discount the opinions of women, who might choose to apply a substitute term. But at the moment I’m talking about boys, generically, who can be pretty harsh on other boys when certain standards of behavior are not met. I cannot believe this term was never applied by his peers to Trump, in his youth . . . and if so, whether or not it bothered him. I suspect not. It appears that money and women, and a massive ego, have made him impervious to such terms. An enviable trait, if you don’t care what people call you, but not one designed to gain you much respect from other boys. Personally, I couldn’t live with myself if the term were applied to me.
A.E. Norton
Woodstock