I am writing with some advance kudos for Officer Jen Frank, who was mentioned as a potential replacement for retiring Norwich Police Chief Doug Robinson (“Norwich Police Chief to Retire,” Dec 21). While I don’t know Frank professionally, I have known her personally over the last several years. I and the rest of our women’s ice hockey team are consistently impressed by her conscientiousness, her deep caring for the community, her drive, her openness and her sense of humor. She is an exemplary human being, and Norwich would be lucky to have her as chief.
Gretchen Stokes
Hanover
The recent debate about the display of a creche and menorah in a public park in Claremont has been overheated and unenlightening. The participants’ lack of knowledge about the First Amendment is responsible for the abundance of heat and the lack of light.
Sam Killay, the gentleman who opposes the display, seems unaware that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld such displays when they include secular symbols of the season (e.g., Santa Claus, reindeer, etc.) along with the customary religious symbols. Contrary to his claim, Claremont is not obliged to remove the religious symbols, but it must add secular holiday symbols to avoid appearing to endorse religion.
Still, Killay is a victim, not a villain, here. The villains are the people who have harassed him for expressing his First Amendment rights, who have forgotten or perhaps never knew that a search for religious tolerance was a prime mover behind the founding of this country. If asked what they love most about the United States, these same people would likely answer “freedom.” But freedom does not mean much if it only protects ideas we like; it must protect ideas we dislike, too.
The First Amendment — not the first thought that pops into the participants’ heads — should guide the Claremont creche debate.
Brian Porto
Windsor
The Valley News faces an important decision: Is it all about protecting its existing business, or is service to the readers and communities of the Upper Valley more important, no matter what that means for its print newspaper?
Before the web, it wasn’t even a choice; the Valley News excelled at both. It was the heartbeat of the Upper Valley, connecting local communities using the best (print) technology available at the time.
But times have changed.
Embrace new technologies to help its customers and communities connect? Or resist anything that threatens its income from print subscriptions?
The Valley News has actually already decided.
We know because we presented this choice five years ago. Before launching DailyUV, we spent a year discussing a joint venture with Newspapers of New England, the company that owns the newspaper. The Valley News would publish its articles on DailyUV — along with all the other newspapers, bloggers and organizations who use our website to reach the Upper Valley. More readers for its stories, better reach for its advertisers.
From what I can tell, the Valley News decided it was too risky to its print business and then circled the wagons.
Did you know DailyUV is not allowed to buy ads in the Valley News? Think about that — the Valley News can’t afford to take our money.
Valley News reporters have never written a story about DailyUV. Seven Days in Burlington has covered us, so we’re “news” — just not news the Valley News wants to share.
The Valley News refuses to credit stories first published on DailyUV. Apparently bloggers who break stories on our site don’t deserve “professional courtesy.”
Earlier this year, the Valley News took it up a notch. First, it went after Hartford’s town manager for publishing on DailyUV, scolding him for putting the Valley News at a “competitive disadvantage.” Now, Jim Kenyon is bullying town officials in Norwich, Lebanon and Windsor to intimidate them — and other local communities — from publishing on DailyUV. He ridicules town efforts to publicize positive initiatives as a waste of taxpayer dollars and a conflict of interest.
The only conflict we see is within the mission of the Valley News itself.
Watt Alexander
CEO, Subtext Media and
DailyUV.Com
White River Junction
Your readers may find this as astonishingly prescient as did I upon finding it among saved articles in my files:
“As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents more and more closely the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcisstic moron.
That was written by H.L. Mencken and published in the July 26, 1920, Baltimore Evening Sun.
Audrey M. Cherin
Hanover
One doesn’t have to be an atheist to object to a governmental body celebrating one or more religions while ignoring others. Religion isn’t the government’s business, and when it makes it its business, it gets into trouble, as the recent Claremont kerfuffle demonstrates. The Founding Fathers knew this, and Article 6 and the First Amendment were the result. Partisan symbols, whether political or religious, don’t belong on public property, period.
Dale Copps
Enfield
I watched as the Kurds helped clear Syrian cities and towns of ISIS fighters so that American troops could move forward in a continuing effort to eliminate this terrorist group that is a worldwide threat. The Kurds exhibited great courage in their efforts to aid us. Now Turkey, which sees the Kurds as a security threat (because, as I see it, the Kurds just want a place to live that they can call their own), wants to physically wipe them out. The Kurds oppose the policies of Recep Erdogan, Turkey’s president, so they must go. It appears we are giving Turkey the go-ahead to eliminate the Kurds. We, along with the rest of the world, should be giving the Kurds whatever military support they need to ensure their existence — in gratitude for their valiant efforts. Turkey, a human rights offender almost as bad as Saudi Arabia, is proving itself to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The Russians, on the other hand, say we have no right to be in Syria. In saying so, they are essentially denying us the right to protect ourselves and others from ISIS, which was not the focus of Syria, Russia or Iran in ridding Syria of anyone determined to be opposing Bashir Assad’s presidency.
It would also appear that the GOP, in 2016, watered down its platform position on the protection of the Ukraine from being overtaken by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. This is reported to have been done at the direction of Donald Trump in his interaction with J.D. Gordon, who is an American communications and foreign policy adviser with known ties to Maria Butina, a recently arrested Russian spy. It is Putin’s intent to regain countries lost in the break-up of the U.S.S.R. It would appear we have been recruited to help him do so. What better time for Russia to move on Ukraine then while we are in planned chaos?
Sylvia J. Heath
Hartland Four Corners
I am still enjoying Alan Tannenbaum’s Dec. 18 letter, “Gun Control Is Nothing But a Liberal Fantasy” — a heartfelt diatribe against every gun-safety concept he could think of.
It calls to mind a poster one could imagine seeing during the recent romaine lettuce scare: “The National Romaine Association (NRA) reminds everyone: Lettuce Doesn’t Kill People. Eating Kills People.”
Robert Spottswood
Norwich