So trapping and killing wild animals satisfies “the desire to conserve animals and land?” (“Carrying on a Vermont Trapping Tradition,” March 26). And the draw is “an absolute love of being outdoors and (being immersed) in the habitats of these animals?”
Surely there is an alternative. If it’s “outsmarting” someone that provides such a thrill, how about learning to play chess and leaving the animals alone — “in the outdoors (where) we’re visitors?” I will never understand how human beings can derive absolute pleasure from taking the life of another creature, for any reason, much less simply for the fun of it. I’m actually glad that more students prefer soccer, if it takes killing to stroke one’s ego.
Susan Malerich
Bridgewater
Thank you for the illustrative “Carrying on a Vermont Trapping Tradition” in the March 26 Sunday Valley News, because I found it both unsettling and affirming on many levels. Given the space and time provided here, I venture to offer the first three questions that struck me in the gut.
If the present value of a beaver pelt is $30, then how much was the rest of its carcass worth when it was still alive?
How much does harvesting that pelt affect that beaver’s related kits in the nearby lodge?
Given the uncertainty of future rainfall and temperature patterns, how does having more beaver ponds help moderate water levels in the landscape?
Though I certainly appreciate a young student’s affinity for the out-of-doors rather than a virtual world online, I am most dismayed by the notion that young people believe that they are only “visitors” to the out-of-doors. When I was similarly aged, I found many opportunities for learning about taking care of both cityscapes and wilderness through mountaineering, tree climbing, wildlife photography and restoration ecology.
Last time I checked, it is 2017. It is not 1720 anymore. I am left wondering why the Valley News saw fit to print the photograph of a coyote’s eyeless face. The tag through it lists other animals toward whom a skilled photographer could have aimed a camera for a more dynamic shot.
Please consider Wendell Berry’s (paraphrased) observation that we do not know what we are doing until we know what we are undoing.
Here’s my advice:
Go out and safely learn how to climb trees. You can work appreciatively for an arborist, and have more thrills than you will ever need while outsmarting trees and their associates.
Nicholas Whittaker Dankers
Plainfield
I was surprised and disappointed to see the extensive coverage of trapping, (“Carrying On a Vermont Trapping Tradition,” March 26), an activity that kills animals painfully, often over an extended period of time. Hopefully, it’s rare that teenagers share this interest because they are more interested in developing skills that promote life rather than destroying it.
Deborah Metzger
Hanover
The recent op-ed by Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation entitled “What America Needs to Confront Is a Failure to Assimilate” (March 20) is misleading. The U.S. has not failed at assimilation as numerous studies by the Pew Research Center have shown. Immigrants and refugees are assimilating at the same rate today as in previous generations, and they have done so because America has offered a welcoming, tolerant environment.
It is that tolerant culture that has resulted in a markedly lower percentage of young people in the U.S. than in Europe traveling to join ISIS.
Feulner blames the ’60s culture and multiculturalism (which he misunderstands), but his organization opposes the progressive legislation of the ’60s that protected labor and offered a safety net to those in need. That indifference to the commonweal breeds criminality and asocial behavior.
The Heritage Foundation supports the Trump adminstration’s executive orders on immigration that have created a climate of fear among the foreign-born in the U.S. and a distrust of the U.S. abroad. Those executive orders encourage terrorism and do not make us safer. As a Swiss writer commented on his country, “one cannot exclude people from society and expect to assimilate them.” Years ago a Swiss doctor immigrating to the U.S. with his Iranian-born wife and two children told me he was immigrating because he knew his wife and children would be accepted in America. I would like to see my America continue to offer that welcoming environment to those who choose to live with us.
Evangeline Monroe
Quechee
A recent article on Donald Trump’s accusation that Obama had his phone wiretapped quoted Trump thusly: “wiretap covers a lot of things.” Presumably, in this case, even if no wires were tapped … some other forms of surveillance, Trump felt, took place. This is not the first instance of Trump’s usage that later draws an explanation of what was intended to be conveyed by words that, in usual parlance, had a different meaning. In one such incident, one of his spokespersons, Kellyanne Conway, said not to listen to his words but to listen to his “heart” (his intentions?).
Somewhere in my memory was a reference to a character in a book for which I hold much delight, and who stood strongly by his use of words in such a manner. With the assistance of an internet search engine, I immediately was able to place what my fuzzy memory had in mind.
Well into Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Alice comes upon an egg that took on more and more human characteristics the closer she got to it, until, there, right in front of her, was Humpty Dumpty, sitting on his fence. Humpty Dumpty extols the advantage of celebrating unbirthdays and the disadvantage of celebrating on a single day. When Alice objects to his unusual use of a word, he replies, “when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
Also, Alice worries about the precariousness of Humpty Dumpty’s position on the wall, he being so round. Humpty Dumpty reminds Alice there’s no need to worry since he has the word, directly from the king, that in such a case all the king’s resources would be directed to putting him together again. After finishing their conversation, Alice moves on through the wood and shortly hears a very loud noise and sees men and horses running through with such incompetence that one can only presume they were unsuccessful.
Through the Looking Glass was first published in 1871, almost 150 years ago. Does it have a message for us today?
Louis A. Kislik
West Lebanon
While looking through a book of old American songs, I chanced on Hail, Columbia, subtitled The President’s March, with music by Philip Phile (1732-1793) and lyrics by Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842). I read the lyrics and was stopped cold by the third and last verse:
Beloved the chief who now commands,
Once more to serve his country stands,
The rock on which the storm will beat,
The rock on which the storm will beat.
But arm’d in virtue firm and true,
His hopes are fixed on Heav’n and you.
When hope was sinking in dismay,
When glooms obscured Columbia’s day,
His steady mind from changes free
Resolv’d on Death or Liberty.
It seems inappropriate, even embarrassing, to sing these words today. So, in the spirit of public service, I have revised the lyrics.
Disgraced the chief who now commands,
His private work ’bove country stands,
His lack of morals, hard to beat,
The only book he’s read’s been in a Tweet.
But armed with nuc’lar warheads tried and true,
He scares the willies out of me and you.
He’s led the country to dismay
Of ever seeing a saner day,
His flippant mind of wisdom free,
Endangers our sweet Liberty.
P. Aarne Vesilind
New London