We’d like to celebrate two Hanover High School students who have set an example for how to “think globally and act locally.”
Hanover High graduating seniors Greta Bolinger, of Lyme, and Leila Trummel, of Etna, received the 2019 Hanover Conservancy Environmental Studies Award at Class Day on June 13. The conservancy’s award, established in 2014, is made in memory of Jim Hornig, former conservancy president and emeritus board member who established the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College.
Each student will receive a $250 scholarship. Both have been outstanding students in the Earth Systems and Ecological Design course, and passionate leaders in the school’s Environmental Club since their freshman year, serving as role models for how students can contribute to solving humanity’s environmental challenges. Through education initiatives, creative thinking and commitment to hard work, they have made the Hanover High community more sustainable and environmentally aware. Both young women plan to attend Bowdoin College in the fall. Congratulations!
ADAIR MULLIGAN
Hanover
The writer is the executive director of the Hanover Conservancy.
Back in February, one of my third-grade students wrote to your newspaper asking for help from your readers with our “State Fair” project, in which our class asked people in each state to send items of interest that the students might include in the State Fair Float that they created (“Dear Izzie, This is the best of Vermont,” March 13).
My students were thrilled as packages started arriving from all over the country. They received newspapers, postcards, maps and many unique items from the wonderful and generous people of the United States of America. Vermonters sent us books, banners, flags, historical information and even maple syrup.
This project could not have been a success without all of you. I’ve had several parents indicate that their family would be taking a trip to the state their child learned about this school year to see the beauty and unique qualities firsthand.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.
SHARI BOZORGZAD
McLean, Va.
My husband, Keith, and I are the former owners of Stern’s Quality Produce in White River Junction. My daughter recently received some comments about the store from several of our former customers. I would like to make it clear that my husband is no longer a buyer for the company, by their choice, and that my family is no longer in the produce business. We all have gone onto other jobs or retirement, so please do not associate any of us with the business.
JUDITH STERN
North Springfield
State Sen. Alison Clarkson, the Woodstock Democrat who represents Windsor County, recently put forth her “legislative update,” in which she attempts to paint a picture of a successful session of the Vermont Legislature that was dedicated to “improving the lives of Vermonters.”
If you swallowed that, and buy her position that this is the fifth-most desirable state to live in, then why, instead of suffering from a lack of people, aren’t people flocking here? Vermont even has to offer $10,000 for out-of-staters to come live and work here.
The governor laments that we have a shortage of 30,000 school students.
Schools are being forced to consolidate, creating hardships for many that include long commutes.
Colleges are closing. Graduating students are forced to leave due to lack of opportunities.
If we could mitigate the damage done by the Legislature each year, we might be actually the fifth-best, or even better.
With a Democratic supermajority in a Legislature that taxes anything that moves, and anything that doesn’t, what else can we expect for the future?
Clarkson revels in a health theme that includes the most radical of abortion bills in the nation. H.57 passed into law after the Democrats, in lockstep, rejected any reasonable compromises.
Clarkson expresses pride in the work to enshrine this into state law and, she hopes, into the state constitution. Many Americans, on both sides of the abortion issue, are justifiably appalled at this, but the liberal Democrats are proud of it.
BOB ORLECK
Randolph
I’m sure every zealous supporter of President Donald Trump, and those who are just “tolerant” of him, could make a wide-ranging list of the things he says and does that they disagree with and see through and are frightened by and embarrassed by and disgusted by and appalled by.
So what attracts and, visibly or invisibly, binds most all of them to this malignancy in our midst? Unquestionably, his racism.
While I greatly appreciate the deafening silence here for the last two years from his supporters and their party, I wonder how they could spin it any other way if they came out from under their rocks.
MICHAEL SCHORSCH
Orford