I was very troubled to read the extensive article in the Sunday Valley News on trapping (“Carrying on a Vermont Trapping Tradition,” March 26). This practice used to be widespread years ago as a means for food and needed income. Today it is totally unacceptable. Pelts no longer bring in large sums. Who eats otter?
The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department encourages this practice and even wants to extend the season on trapping otters, such beautiful and rarely seen creatures. You can read their proposal on their website, vtfishandwildlife.com.
Beaver are also being trapped and killed by drowning. They have strong family units and provide wonderful wetland habitats that draw all sorts of wildlife and birds. Beaver are actually being introduced out West to enhance water storage in dry areas.
Please call 802-828-1000 or email fwinformation@vermont.gov and let the department know how you feel about trapping.
Let’s stop this unnecessary and very cruel killing.
Kit Hood
Sharon
Please, stop normalizing cruelty by printing hunting and trapping stories, meat and dairy recipes and stories about dairy and meat farming. Tradition, such as in the March 26 trapping story (“Carrying on a Vermont Trapping Tradition”), is no reason to print animal cruelty stories.
Tradition is a common excuse for horrific oppression and abuse of animals and humans. Using tradition as reason to normalize and promote cruelty is moral laziness.
There are no ethical and nutritional needs to harm and kill animals, especially today when we have sustainable, compassionate ways to eat, dress and live healthfully without harming those who have no voice and no choice. It is well proven, scientifically, that eating animal products contributes to cancer, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis, among other diseases, as well as to the planet’s destruction.
Informed, good people are finding ways to protect sentient beings. As do we, animals — our kin— wish to live full natural lives without suffering.
So, please, think about the subtext in articles extolling animal cruelty, including: stories about dairy farming that requires cows be raped, repeatedly, their babies taken to be killed for meat or raped, so humans can drink their milk; stories about hunting and trapping that cause extreme suffering; and meat, fish, dairy recipes that require the torture of billions of animals, annually, to provide ingredients.
Christian psychologist and author M. Scott Peck (People of the Lie), said harming others for pleasure, profit and gain is evil.
Please help readers become more compassionate by printing articles about kindness. Our nation, built with brutality, spreads cruelty here and worldwide. Brutalizing living beings must stop, if we are to save our souls and Earth — and the press can lead the way.
Compassionate, self-reflective people, worldwide, are turning from traditions, values and habits that do not honor and protect all life. I hope the Valley News joins this movement, leading the way, locally.
Meg and Jack Hurley
Claremont
We appreciate Tim Camerato’s recent coverage of the new Mascoma Community Health Center’s progress; it captured the exciting story of communities coming together to take charge of their health care (“Mascoma Clinic Nearly Ready: Health Center to Open in June,” March 29). There are, however, a couple of reported items we would like to clarify.
First, we do have $185,296 in the bank and the outstanding payments coming from the USDA will result in a cash balance of approximately $494,000 on opening day, just as we had projected. Second, the health center will take almost all forms of insurance including commercial policies, Medicare and Medicaid.
In the future, we plan to develop a fixed annual payment plan (i.e., a flat fee) based on the average costs for a typical patient and adjusted by the service package requested. Modeling suggests that this fee could be as low as $1,500, but we need to open our doors, see patients and experience real-world costs to accurately determine the final fee. Health finance modeling is complicated and with recent changes proposed at the national level there is uncertainty ahead.
Finally, the board of Mascoma Community Healthcare is committed to providing the “Right care, Right cost, Right here.” Thank you once again for your coverage and to all the volunteers and contributors who have made our new health center possible.
Dale Barney
Chairman of the Board
Peter Thurber
Vice chairman of the Board
Mascoma Community Healthcare, Inc.
Canaan
Richard Hofstader, the noted historian, observed, “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” My concern is that the “angry mind,” as Bannon, is chief White House strategist and a close compatriot of Donald Trump.
A two-person play is unfolding before our eyes: Trump the loud huckster proclaiming a new order to make America great again; Bannon, the prompter, as chief White House strategist representing the dark side of the American presidency. Bannon’s prompts are clear. In his view, we are in a crisis period wherein the old order will be destroyed and a new one created. “We’re at war” he exclaims as he imagines an apocalypse characterized by a “massive new war” in the Middle East with the radical jihadis. He calls for the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” that is, government regulators.
How will this ideology affect his policy recommendations to Trump? His influence is obvious: Bannon was the main force behind the president’s stalled ban on travel from seven Muslim countries. The threatened U.S. departure from the Paris Climate Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement are in line with Bannon’s positions. Consistent, also, are Trump’s actions to curb Dodd-Frank, the Clean Power Plan and major portions of the Affordable Care Act.
Bannon grounds his ideology in Strauss and Howe’s grand historical scheme which argues that every 80 years in American history a crisis, or “fourth turning” occurs that destroys an old order and creates a new one. The authors predict another great crisis sometime in the first 15 years of the 21st century. They note that many potential threats loom on the horizon: a terrorist attack, a financial collapse, a major war and others. The authors emphasize, however, that it is our response as a society to the threat, not the event itself that is most important.
Will we see a self-fulfilling prophecy played out? If Bannon and the administration can create fear among citizens that a catastrophic “crisis” is forthcoming, they will likely put society on a crisis footing in response to whatever events do happen. We should be worried. We need to be forever mindful that no one has a monopoly on wisdom.
Bob Scobie
Lebanon
Our GOP-dominated Congress quietly passed a bill that would “gut” internet privacy rules. It is difficult for me to understand how this happened.
I spend $100 a year for an internet security company to protect my computer from hacking and illegal activity. In addition, I am prudent about my bank account information and credit card activity, checking weekly to see that transactions are legitimate. I am careful what internet sites I visit and purchase from and with whom I share information.
And yet, Congress just acted to make it easier for my information to be obtained and sold without my permission or knowledge. Why? Who are they serving?
Does this improve productivity? Does this increase hiring? Or just improve bottom-line profit at the expense of my privacy and security?
Liz Maloof
New London
In his column (“On the Road in This Changed and Troubled Country of Ours,” March 24), Bill Nichols correctly argues that Middlebury College students who shouted down Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve, did little more than make Murray seem a victim of small-mindedness — precisely the opposite of their intention. Engagement is not appeasement. Have the courage to hear the guy out and then give him an earful — not before!
Fred Bruning
Huntington, N.Y.