On behalf of everyone at Listen Community Services, we want to thank the Upper Valley for its support during this difficult time, more important now than ever given the grave inequities COVID-19 has wrought on incomes.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the lower the wage, the more likely it is that a job is lost — a conclusion reflected in the pandemic’s catastrophic effects on service industries, such as restaurants, hotels and entertainment, among others. These are jobs that can’t be performed online, put workers in increased danger of infection, and are clustered in the same service industries that provided some relief during the Great Recession of 2008. The Federal Reserve predicts that employment will not return to pre-pandemic levels until the end of 2023. For many hourly workers, jobs may never return.
Working parents in particular are struggling to keep what jobs are available as they cope with day care center closings and disrupted school schedules.
Listen has seen visits to its food pantry increase by 75 percent in the last six months, with many coming to our doors for the first time. Our community dinners have seen similar increases (over 36,000 meals served to date), as have requests for housing assistance, help with heat and utility bills, and countless other shortfalls. The situation for our neighbors is as dire as we’ve ever seen, and there’s no end in sight. But we are committed to meeting as much of our community’s needs as possible through programs and services that are more vital now than ever before.
Listen has long been accustomed to seeing how the Upper Valley community generously supports its neighbors, but in the last six months that generosity has increased by leaps and bounds. We want to thank you for making it possible for us to keep our safety net strong no matter how bad things get. We’re in this together, and we’ll come out together — stronger.
For more information, or if you need assistance, please contact the Listen office at 603-448-4553, or visit us online at listencs.org.
LAUREL STAVIS
Lebanon
JAY BENSON
Norwich
SARAH LORD
Hanover
APRIL HARKNESS
Hartland
The writers are the chair, vice-chair, secretary and treasurer, respectively, of the LISTEN Community Services board of directors. This letter was signed by all the members of the board.
We need dialogue and education to understand how to dismantle racism. The firing of one person for earnestly not grasping the impact of her beliefs buries even deeper the real issues and questions (“Board fires Windsor principal,” Oct. 17). When all the attention is focused on one person, the opportunity to focus on the hard work needed to come to terms with racism is missed.
White people need to take time to think about, feel, read and listen to what it is to be a Black person in America. We all need to humbly seek to understand. By making accusations, we simply reinforce misunderstandings. Anti-racist work takes time and commitment. One step forward is for school districts to actively take on this difficult conversation. Otherwise, we contribute to silencing the needed truth-telling about our shared story of racism.
We were encouraged to see the article about anti-racist efforts in Lebanon and Hartford (“Board reviews racism policy: Other area school districts have adopted measures,” Oct. 30). We are all in this together. We have been brought up in this society where Black lives are not treated equally, and part of being a white person in America is not seeing this clearly.
MARTHA STEIN and LEAH STEIN
Windsor
Chris Lord, a middle school teacher in Windsor, put up a large Black Lives Matter flag in his classroom to assure students of color that they were “safe” there. A parent saw the display and notified the school administration. The matter eventually got to the School Board, which put off taking action pending further discussion (“Classroom flags spur talk of standards,” Oct. 16).
It was wise to give adequate time to the important issue of how political issues should be handled in classrooms, if at all. A statement is political if it supports one side of a contended issue. The question arose about what would happen if a student wanted a (pro-police) Blue Lives Matter flag displayed. The reply was that people of color have no choice about their identity, whereas a police officer could change vocations.
That seems a facile comparison. If you identify with your vocation and are happy with it, how easy can it be to change your calling? The child of a police officer probably will have heard strong criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement’s views about police. Would that child feel isolated in Lord’s classroom?
The Black Lives Matter movement is nothing if not political, and many people are not in accord with its stance on police and policing, among its other positions. I don’t know how its members feel about the cultural right of parents to imbue their own children with their own values and opinions, but I know how most people feel about that.
Lord is making political statements that many parents and children disagree with. (I dislike the overdramatic use of “safe” and “unsafe.” We spend our lives living with disagreements without claiming to be in danger thereby.) The real question about choice is this: Given his authority, how much choice is Lord affording the children who disagree with the large, emphatically political statements on his classroom wall? He can fly those flags from his own flagpole if he wants to. In his classroom, he should at least try to be evenhanded.
ROGERS ELLIOTT
Lebanon
I was surprised to read that the Lebanon School District can’t certify that the community has a “clear need” to participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Summer Food Service Program, which was recently extended through the end of the school year (“Schools pass on meal program,” Oct. 26).
Don’t the school officials believe that Lebanon is second only to Hartford in receiving food services from the Haven? As a contributor to Listen’s food pantry, I know there has been a 50% increase in visits from March to August compared with last year.
Having taught in the Lebanon School District for 23 years, I have seen the not-too-subtle way in which “free and reduced lunch” kids are singled out, often being asked to go to the front of the line. And you can bet that the “paying kids” notice. There are many types of needs, besides financial needs. These kids can’t wear $100 sneakers or Patagonia jackets, but they can have a psychological need met by being on the same footing as their peers: free breakfast and lunch for all. The story made it quite clear that districts need not prove financial need. Grant Bosse, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Education, has said he doesn’t believe any school has been denied based on need. Perhaps Lebanon doesn’t want to be bothered with a little extra paperwork required by the Department of Education. Please reverse this decision.
TERRY GRIGSBY
Lebanon
Darrell Huff, in his 1954 classic How to Lie with Statistics, wrote, “Misinforming people by the use of statistical material might be called statistical manipulation, in a word (though not a very good one), statisticulation.” The Valley News reports that it is the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation that creates the maps that identify COVID-19 cases (“Travel limits split up valley,” Oct. 29). Somehow, I wish it were a public health agency, rather than a financial regulatory agency, that was creating the COVID-19 maps, but that is an issue for another day.
Using some mysterious weighted averages and a multiplier of 2.4, the source of which is not clearly identified, the financial regulators in Vermont have determined that Grafton County in New Hampshire has more than 500 COVID-19 cases per million. However, the Valley News reports that Grafton County has a total of only 30 active cases. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that Grafton County had a total population of 89,886 in 2019 and is 1,750 square miles in size. Using those actual numbers, no weighted averages or mysterious multipliers from banking regulators, Grafton County has 0.017 cases per square mile and perhaps 333 cases per million, if you adjust the actual population in order to do the per million calculation.
Everything related to the coronavirus is most serious, and I wish that public health officials were doing all of the COVID-19 calculations. I wonder about what other statistics this Vermont banking agency might have done.
JOHN MUDGE
Lyme
Last spring, the Hanover Co-op Food Stores instituted special hours. The morning was reserved for seniors and those with compromised immune systems and the evenings were for health care workers.
For many months, those morning hours were observed. Since Hanover schools reopened, however, the store is more crowded. I understand that it is a convenient time for families to shop, having just dropped off their children at school, but for the good of the community at large, I would ask you to reconsider entering the store during those hours. There is much ugliness in the world right now — hence the abundance of lawn signs in Hanover encouraging us to be good to others. Let’s follow our own advice and continue to allow seniors and immune-compromised residents shop with ease.
SUZANNE LEE-CIAMBRA
Hanover
Citizens must question the narrative, continue to push for change
After the presidential election, there will be no noticeable changes in our lives. The media will continue to control the narratives, the politicians will continue to make decisions based on the will of their donors and the new coronavirus will still be a thorn in our side. To counter this, we must search out reputable journalists, fight for new laws that will result in our politicians actually representing us, and learn about preventions and treatments that work for COVID-19.
Whether Democrat or Republican wins on Tuesday, our country is headed toward becoming a totalitarian regime where the suppression of ideas is the norm. Social media is censoring independent journalists, medical doctors and individuals who question the narrative. Many independent YouTube channels have been taken down. Studies in prominent medical journals have shown hydroxychloroquine to be effective, yet the treatment has become dangerously politicized. Other studies show adequate levels of Vitamin D and zinc correlate with better outcomes in COVID-19 patients, yet this information is not widely disseminated. Dr. Harvey A. Risch of the Yale School of Public Health wrote in Newsweek that physicians who have been using these medications despite widespread skepticism are “truly heroic.” Two of those doctors saved the lives of hundreds of patients, he wrote, but are now fighting to save their licenses and their reputations.
No matter who wins the presidential race, lobbyists will still control our policies. As citizens, we need to push for change such as ranked-choice voting, publicly funded elections, reversing Citizens United and making it illegal to become a lobbyist after serving in public office.
The wealthy, the politicians and the media want us divided. Stay alert and realize that when you rely on only the same large media outlets, you are missing out on other points of view. The mainstream media’s only agenda is to make more money. Stop feeding them, question everything and do your own research. Most important, after the election, be kind to your neighbor, co-worker, family and friends who may not have voted the way you did. The one thing the corporatocracy would hate more than anything is the poor, working and middle classes uniting because, when it comes down to it, we have more in common than we think.
TONYA GUNN
Vershire
As we approached this election I was doing some thinking and I have a question: Does anyone remember any of these young men: Arthur Sykes, Henry Tomkins, Charles Williams, George Richardson, Israel Sanborn?
How about Ruel G. Austin, James P. Bascom, Jenison A. Putman or Jeremiah P. Reddington?
Or Benjamin H. Haven, Antoine Hockman, Gilford L. Hurd?
They were some of New Hampshire’s finest, young men filled with hope and dreams for the future that lay before them. But when their country called upon them to serve, they left everything behind and answered. They put their lives on the line for what they believed.
I don’t know their personal stories, but I am sure that many of them lay beneath moss-covered tombstones that say they “died so that all men could be free.”
You might want to visit them, honor their memory and thank them for their service to our nation during the Civil War.
Whenever I see a Confederate flag I think of these men. I know what that flag meant to them: Treason. It was the flag carried by those who were trying to end their lives, and the great experiment President Abraham Lincoln described as “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
The character of the people of the United States is indelibly spelled out in blood, in our history and in our continuing attempts to form a more perfect union. A Confederate flag is a vestige of our nation’s “original sin” and has no place in our world today. NASCAR is to be congratulated for coming, if belatedly, to that realization.
I am not an African American, so I cannot begin to understand what the Confederate flag means to them and I will not presume to speak or describe how they feel when they see one.
I suggest that we seek out our Black brothers and sisters and ask them about how they feel. I am sure it will be a learning experience for us all.
ELDON SIMPSON
Newport
Vietnam has had 35 deaths from COVID-19. That’s one for every 2.7 million people, and the population of Vietnam is about 95 million.
Vietnam received technical support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to deal with the pandemic. Its scientists and health officials collaborate closely with the CDC.
If the U.S. had the same death rate as Vietnam, we would have had 137 deaths, not 225,000.
DAVID COOPER
Hartland
Friends of Veterans would like to thank all our donors, sponsors and players who made our annual golf fundraiser at the Baker Hill Golf Club a tremendous success.
This fundraiser, along with the many grants we receive, will allow us the opportunity to make this challenging year the fourth consecutive year of providing over $100,000 in financial assistance to veterans and their families who reside in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Our all-volunteer organization (no paid staff) has operated continuously through very difficult times. Friends of Veterans provides financial assistance when eviction or foreclosure is imminent, utility assistance if shutoffs are threatened and vehicle repairs if the vehicle is needed for employment or medical appointments.
In addition, Friends of Veterans assists with home repairs if it’s a livability issue, such as losing heat in cold-weather periods.
We also assist veterans with PTSD acquire a service dog when prescribed. We continue to provide assistance throughout the two-state area.
Vermont and New Hampshire veterans may apply via our website, www.fovvtnh.org. Inquiries may be made by email assistance@fovvtnh.org or calling 802-296-8368.
Thank you, veterans for serving our country.
PATT TAYLOR
Quechee
The writer is president of Friends of Veterans.