If Brianne Goodspeed’s article on Karen Crouse’s new book, Norwich (“Cradle of Winter Olympians: Norwich Nurtures Athletes, and a Glowing Self-Image,” Jan. 13) was meant as a book review it failed miserably when she ended the piece with a political crescendo of factually tenuous, anti-Norwich polemics.
Norwich is anti-affordable housing? Goodspeed just repeats a trite calumny. Most people in Norwich are very pro-affordable housing and there have been numerous proposals to build affordable housing that is integrated into the town. These have all been dismissed by the Planning Commission, not by the Norwich voters. The Planning Commission is committed to large-scale development and opposes organically scaled affordable housing. As a side observation, developing hundreds of commercial/mixed-use acres is big-league construction and big business. Building affordable housing that is welcoming, blends well and becomes an integral part of the town is not. Some might think it naive to discount the economic forces.
Being affiliated with Chelsea Green, one would surmise that Goodspeed supports conservation, open fields and positive Vermont environmental agendas. Most Norwich residents do. That is why many of us object to the new proposed zoning changes. The zoning would create a sprawl of hundreds of dwelling units and potentially thousands of new residents segregated in a commercial development strip along Route 5 South. It is simply untruthful to suggest that Norwich objects to this zoning change because of affordable housing.
We do object to creating a semi-urban satellite town that would encumber some 350 acres of Norwich’s greenbelt. Does strip development truly speak to Goodspeed’s Vermont ethos? If Goodspeed wants to make social and political comments about Norwich she should at the very least learn facts about Norwich, facts about the true content and environmental impact of the proposed zoning and facts about how Norwich votes — not just make stuff up about us and our town.
Francis J Manasek
Norwich
The 1987 public service ad “This is your brain on drugs,” which was the subject of the Jan. 13 Forum letter “Don’t Believe the Pot Peddlers,” was a scare tactic that obviously worked. Without referencing any actual scientific data, with only a few words and stark visual imagery, the ad’s message has remained a staple of a similarly fact-dry movement built on falsehoods, misunderstandings and paranoia. I would hope that our representatives, in any political body, have forgotten that ad and are not working under the influence of a much more dangerous drug: fear.
The letter conveys the same sort of deliberate lack of information, the same sort of paranoid fervor meant only to further a cause rather than to educate others. Marijuana has been blocked from any meaningful study and research for decades, so claims that it leads to further drug use, that it dangerously impairs its users and otherwise destroys their lives, fall flat in the face of that simple fact. Legalization of marijuana will lead, ultimately, to safer use and further research. By legalizing marijuana and removing the need for a black market, it will be significantly harder for children to acquire pot, prices will drop, the financial strain it puts on people who require it for medical reasons will lessen and the dangerous drug subculture will recede. As more research is done, regulation will be easier as facts become more clear and, in the end, marijuana use will be the safest it’s been in decades.
To oppose legalization is to oppose common-sense pot safety. Can we really feel that our children, grandchildren and indeed ourselves are safer in a climate in which marijuana information is a trove of “ifs” and “maybes,” where the black market can distribute to children as easily as it can to adults, where to access marijuana one often must find it among significantly more dangerous drugs being sold by men and women with little to lose?
Wake up and smell the pot. Contact your representatives.
Kenzie L. Hickman
West Fairlee
I was shocked in reading the obituary page of my Jan. 14 issue of the Sunday Valley News to see the article on Edgar Killen, who was responsible for the killing of three civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer of 1964 (“Edgar Ray Killen, ‘Mississippi Burning’ Klansman, Dies at 92,” Jan. 14). The next day, Jan. 15, was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day when our country should remember King and applaud what he did for civil rights. I find it disgusting that this man, Killen, who was so despicable, would have such a large article published anywhere.
My only consolation is that he was convicted and incarcerated for long years, albeit at taxpayers’ expense. In the future, please don’t include such people in the obituary page. The national news page, yes, but not where decent human beings’ obituaries are published.
Lorraine Zigman
Perkinsville
How cold is it? So cold even the thermometers can’t take it.
Our old one broke and it said 60 degrees all the time. I wanted to keep that one, but my husband said it was broken and we needed to replace it. I said, “Get a pretty one.”
He bought one with beautiful, bright birds. Trouble was, it was so colorful that it was almost impossible to see the thin red line pointing to the temperature. Well, we are old and have trouble seeing on the clearest day. We are not going to see that marker on a foggy, dim, cloudy, snowy, rainy day — about 90 percent of New England weather.
That wouldn’t work, so we bought a very large one. I said I could even see that from the bedroom on the second floor on the other side of the deck (well, I was kidding).
Then the unthinkable (maybe not that unthinkable) happened. The large one broke at 30 degrees. For a few days I was left wondering why my deck thermometer read 30 degrees but my car had falling numbers of 6, 7 or 10 degrees below zero.
If a thermometer can’t take the heat, how are mere humans to fare?
Karolyn Bowen
White River Junction