The Taliban and
the Buddhas of Bamiyan

In the spring of 1966, about to end our three-year stay in New Delhi, India, my husband and I decided on an Afghan adventure. We flew to Kabul, secured a Jeep and a driver from the U.S. Agency for International Development office there and, in the glorious ignorance of youth, set forth for the Bamiyan Valley.

We took our little white Swiss army tent, a couple of sleeping bags, a few clothes and canned goods. It was spring and the snows were only just melting on the hillsides. The road was rock strewn, the climb steep. Doubts emerged. The Jeep and the driver objected.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Then, before us, as we stood on a high cliff overlooking the valley, a link in the historic Silk Road between China and the Western world, it was all worth it. We beheld the Buddhas of Bamiyan, two massive 6th-century sculptures carved from the cliffside of the valley, 115 feet and 174 feet tall respectively. A memory we will never forget.

However, in 2001, the Taliban, viewing them as idols not of the Islamic faith, decided they should be forgotten. They mined them with dynamite over a period of days, advertised their oncoming destruction, and blew them up. This also we will never forget.

Felicity Swayze

Hartford

Grateful for COVID vaccine

I have depended on Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital for my health care for many years, including operations, knee replacement, eye exams and other procedures. During all those years, I’ve been able to trust the doctors, nurses and receptionists to always put my needs first. Today that means that all the staff at DHMC assures my continued good health by being vaccinated, wearing face masks, and doing whatever becomes necessary as we battle the COVID-19 virus.

We must all remember that the enemy is the coronavirus. I’m 84, which means that I had measles, mumps and chickenpox as a child before there were vaccines available. I’m grateful that I got the polio vaccine, and not polio itself, which a friend of mine contracted in her teens.

Please support the COVID vaccine and be thankful that DHMC continues to care for all of us.

Babette Hansen

Lebanon