This past week, I was in the Ocean State Job Lot store in Newport, N.H. At the end of checking out, the clerk asked me if I wanted to donate to “Relief for Ukraine.” I donated $5 and went home to look it up on the Internet. I discovered that Ocean State Job Lot has a very extensive charitable effort, for food banks, veterans’ organizations and others, shown on their website. Nothing about Ukraine, yet.
Within a day of my call to customer service, I was called by David Sarlitto, who heads Ocean State’s charitable activities. He reports to the owners and works with organizations that are involved in charitable activities.
When war broke out in Ukraine, Ocean State decided to work on getting food, clothing, and health and hygiene items into Ukraine. The best route was to go through the Ukrainian Orthodox Church networks. These churches, here and in Poland and Ukraine, have already linked up with Ocean State to receive truckloads of aid and get it into Ukraine. There were loaded trucks leaving for Port Redding, N.J., last Friday and Saturday. Their contents were airlifted to a location in Poland, near the Ukrainian border, and received by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church network there. The goods were then loaded into Polish and Ukrainian vans and cars provided by the church networks, and taken into Ukraine, reaching their destinations by Tuesday! Ocean State has good connections with military personnel, using them to protect the shipments and transfers. Efforts of this type have often run into problems with theft, and military involvement helps ensure deliveries.
Mr. Sarlitto’s explanation was astounding. I plan to go to our Job Lot store tomorrow and increase my donation. If you have questions, Mr. Sarlitto said you may contact him at 617-283-1602. I do not do social networking, but if you feel it might help, that is up to you. I was personally glad to find a way, however small, to help the Ukrainians as they fight for their country.
Priscilla Hagebusch
Newport
When I first came to this country many years ago, I learned all I could about public life. How elections run, what the various parties stand for and in particular, I was informed that GOP stood for “Grand Old Party.”
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it actually stands for the party of Good Ole Putin.
Alex Hartov
Enfield
In editorial after editorial, the reader is told that Putin’s behavior has shocked the EU, UK, USA and NATO out of their complacency. That complacency has been described as the complacency of big powers who, for reasons of inertia, self-interest and above all else the preservation of the status quo, ignored or denied the possibility that Putin might actually invade a neighboring independent nation. Warnings were self-servingly treated as misguided and misinformed. Many of Europe’s elite politicians benefited from lucrative Kremlin ties, and many more have benefited from the wash of oligarchic money stolen from the Russian people. But we are told that those days of complacency and the preservation of an illusory status quo are behind us.
They are not.
At this very moment Donald Trump is still being treated like a legitimate political figure who could be president again. The complacency afforded Trump by the Republican Party, too many Democrats and the media itself is an unfolding national and international crisis.
The DOJ’s unwillingness to invest in and defend the rule of law (deferring the prosecution of Trump’s manifest criminality to local prosecutors lest they alarm Trump-supporting conservatives) parallels Europe’s unwillingness to invest in and harden their military status lest it disturb and alarm Putin and his supporters. The illusion of stability in the status quo will almost certainly precipitate an even greater international crisis should Trump be reelected.
America’s role, as NATO reformulates and likely expands, is crucial. The danger to this pivot in East-West relationships posed by a man as corrupt, incompetent and ignorant as Donald Trump (let alone the sycophants he surrounds himself with) cannot possibly be overstated. If Donald Trump is allowed to become president again, historians will wonder at the supine and supreme complacency of a nation that already had, as warning and example, the price paid by Europe for its own complacency.
Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to this nation and the world and must be treated as such.
Patrick Gillespie
South Strafford
I am invariably offended by cartoonist Lisa Benson’s opinions. But the recent piece in the Valley News on Wednesday, March 2, makes her stunning ignorance clear. It’s gratifying to see Putin being treated like the childish bully he is by “Mother Russia,” until you see the belt. My guess is that Lisa has never been beaten or she uses and excuses physical punishment. Either way she is shamefully out of touch.
Lynne Wardlaw
Sunapee
Welcome back, Shaker Bridge Theatre. Last night was a treat not to miss: Incognito. See it! After COVID and isolation, we all need a night like this. I had no idea what this play was about and I was riveted the entire performance. The acting is TOP QUALITY, as is the directing, and a breath of fresh air. How Shaker Bridge maintains this standard is a mystery. We are fortunate indeed to have it so near to us. Do not miss it.
Liliana Paradiso
Hanover
I don’t know whether to be exasperated or amused that the disappearance of winter as we’ve known it is being treated as news. It should be no more newsworthy than yesterday’s sunrise, for it was just as sure to arrive.
For more than 50 years, competent scientists have warned that winter in our neck of the woods — the months that stayed below freezing almost all the time — would disappear. In fact, when I was taking courses in heat transfer and energy utilization in engineering school in the 1960s, we students were assigned the calculation of expected climate change. Our slide rule predictions were crude compared to today’s computerized projections, but the eventual result of greenhouse gas emissions was not in doubt.
But the world decided not to care. That was doubly unfortunate, because phasing out fossil fuels could have prevented not just climate chaos, but the accumulation of wealth, power and influence in petro states such as Russia and Middle Eastern countries that have fueled and still are funding disastrous wars.
The climate destruction we see today is just a hint of what will come if we don’t curtail greenhouse gas emissions soon. I hope the world will change its mind and act now.
Richard Andrews
Springfield, Vt.
The op-ed on school vouchers by Sens. Ruth Ward and Denise Ricciardi (“Why we’re protecting choices for NH parents,” Feb. 25) is a textbook example of how politicians lie. The op-ed claims “to be clear, not a single dollar for this program comes from local property tax payers.” While true on its face, it is false in practice. For every student that participates in the program, the state “adequacy” aid to that local district will be reduced. So, one less kid in class, and the school eventually loses up to about $4,600. The district is then compensated for the loss with a “grant,” but those grants are phased out by 2026.
Eventually, the district itself will get $4,600 less aid per year for that student. But that classroom still needs a teacher, and heat; the parking lot still needs plowing, and the buses need to run. Those costs have not been reduced by the loss of a student, or a handful of students. That lost aid will need to be recovered somewhere, and that somewhere is either in higher local property taxes or fewer opportunities for students.
So, it is dishonest to say that dollars from this program won’t come from local taxpayers. They will, through misdirection and sleight of hand. “To be clear,” this is about defunding our secular public schools and sending taxpayer money to private (and most often) religious schools. Email info@doe.nh.gov and ask for a copy of the “EFA Fact Sheet with Provider” to see the impact on your town and which private and religious institutions (many out-of-state) your public money could be enriching. Starting with the Bs, they include Brewster Academy, a boarding school in Wolfeboro, annual tuition $62,000, and Bradford Christian Academy, a religious school in Massachusetts, and Gregory the Great Academy, a Catholic school in … Pennsylvania. I suggest folks in Concord get back to the job of strengthening our communities’ public schools with real and fair equity for all children rather than, under the misappropriated banner of “freedom,” trafficking in teary-eyed testimonials while peddling this cynical, fiscally irresponsible and unconstitutional excuse for real reform.
David W. Ricker
Orford
Several recent articles and letters to the editor have called for imposing a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine. We can all agree that this war of Putin’s choice is a tragedy, but a “no-fly zone” is not the answer. A no-fly zone is not a magical force field — it requires U.S. and NATO forces to shoot down Russian planes and destroy anti-aircraft installations. This would certainly be perceived as an act of war and would escalate conflict with a nuclear armed state. I hope people understand that calls for a no-fly zone are calls for war between the U.S. and Russia.
Robert Meyers
West Lebanon
The value of libraries
Tuesday evening was a really good Candidates Forum in Enfield, where I was on the ballot for library trustee, and there was a question: “Are libraries relevant?”
YES! OF COURSE THEY ARE! Why? Libraries hold all the knowledge of the world. History, technology, science and literature have been written down for thousands of years and kept in caves, in buildings, in tombs, on scrolls, in BOOKS! There are lots of different libraries — County Register of Deeds, town records, state archives, cookbooks, medical knowledge and records, how-to manuals and too many more to mention. They exist in our offices and our homes — everywhere! We use them every day. All that stuff on the internet — where was it first? In books, newspapers, magazines, research papers!
Furthermore, the public library serves a critical function in the town: Some people have no access to computers, no access to the internet, no other way to obtain information. Where can they go? To the library.
Libraries and librarians are up-to-date on technology, and every day they provide patrons with necessary information. So you have all the bells and whistles at home — what if the power goes out? And you can’t charge all those batteries? You can go to the library! So go there! Read to your kids every day!
Susan Brown
Enfield