This pandemic is changing our lives in ways we never anticipated. We’ve all been asked to make sacrifices and adopt new ways of conducting our day-to-day lives that haven’t always been easy to accept. The past several months have been particularly difficult for those who are caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease.
Trying to explain and maintain quarantine requirements when dementia is involved is next to impossible. Often, if the loved one resides in a memory care facility or nursing home, state requirements either make visits extremely difficult or rule them out completely. In times such as these, finding a way to get rid of this terrible disease seems more important than ever. Fortunately, there’s a way we can help make that happen.
Oct. 10 is the date for all residents of the Upper Valley to take part in the annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s. This year, COVID-19 has made it impossible to assemble and walk safely as a group, so we’ll have to create our own individual walks. Instead of one large group of enthusiastic people together in one location, this year’s walk will be everywhere and anywhere! But even though the event will be virtual this year, the effort to stop Alzheimer’s is still very real. Residents of the Upper Valley have contributed generously to this important cause in past years, and I hope you’ll consider doing so again this year.
You can find more information about the Walk to End Alzheimer’s and how to contribute — both by giving and creating your own walk — at http://act.alz.org/uppervalley. Oct. 10 — at any time and any place you like. Save the date!
DONNA GRANT REILLY
Hanover
Mike Cryans is running again, and running still. Running again for the New Hampshire Executive Council. Running still as an elite runner. By year’s end, he will have run every day, every single day, for 10 straight years, 10 miles a day, almost one and a half times around the planet.
Extraordinary.
There must have been times when he didn’t feel like it, times when he was sick, times when it was inconvenient, bad weather, but he never gave up. He ran every single day.
So, he’s running again and he’s running still. The same word, differently applied, has much in common with Cryans. Both running for office and running require discipline, commitment, obligation, perseverance, concentration, character and steadfastness, to name just a few of the qualities he brings to serving on the Executive Council, making supporting him an easy decision, as he runs, and runs.
Vote Mike Cryans for New Hampshire Executive Council, First District.
GEORGE T. HATHORN
Hanover
I have found one silver lining as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We have been talking for years about the need to expand high-speed internet access in New Hampshire’s rural communities. There have been many bills in the New Hampshire Legislature dealing with different ways of getting broadband delivered to the unserved and underserved communities, and we have been making progress.
Recently, Gov. Chris Sununu made a significant announcement: Funds from the federal CARES Act will be made available to connect more than 3,000 properties to high-speed internet. “This is about the last mile, the actual hookup to the property for that broadband access that everyone should have.”
In Senate District 8, the following towns will benefit: Deering, Hillsborough, Springfield, Stoddard and Washington. Negotiations are underway for other areas, as well. I am glad to see something really good coming out of this pandemic.
RUTH WARD
Stoddard, N.H.
The writer represents District 8 in the New Hampshire Senate.
We are compelled to face the truth. America is burning. There appears to be no escape from the inferno. Our collective lack of awareness, our blindness to our own minds, has made the emerging conflagration increasingly inevitable.
Denial and delusion, nourished by the hijacked amygdalae of tens of millions of Americans, gives birth to an irreversible wave of civil strife. The most duplicitous and devious president in American history stokes the fire; and despite his outrageous lies and fascistic musings, we continue on toward the cliff. Our ability to reason has all but disappeared. Our prefrontal cortices are in full retreat. Our brains are aflame. Rage begets rage. In a nation already rent by ideological divisions and infected by the internet’s conspiracy-driven madnesses, the fire grows.
And now, COVID-19. And our truth is revealed for all to see. Much of the world pities us. Many others whisper that we got what was coming to us. The United States, for generations, has leaned upon the illusion, the myth, of American exceptionalism. But in this moment of reveal, the curtain is drawn back. We are no different than the rest.
America is on fire, and we truly have no one to blame but ourselves. Predictions of 300,000 deaths by the new year from a virus — a virus that could be all but halted by wearing a simple piece of cloth — means nothing to tens of millions of rabid Trump acolytes. A president who has all but admitted he plans to undermine the coming democratic election — nothing. We are staring squarely at the looming prospect of our own national demise, and we seem incapable of halting the coming maelstrom. It’s utterly astonishing.
DAN WEINTRAUB
Quechee