Shame on us if even a plurality of Upper Valley residents hold the same opinion as the xenophobic Valley News editorial from Saturday (“Stay home, Big Green,”Aug. 22). It is an uncomfortably thin line between the threat attributed to students returning from those undesirable “angry red” (in viral activity) states to our “oasis” and the threat attributed by Trumpists to immigrants from undesirable countries to American greatness.
How quickly we forget that this “oasis” — including its medical center — would not exist without Dartmouth College. It exists to educate students, who bring not only vibrancy, but much-needed diversity to our community.
The college is going to great lengths, at great expense, to mitigate the risk to the community we all share. It is presumably learning lessons not only from peer institutions that have failed, but from those having success, which will not be highlighted in the national media cacophony.
We should be grateful for — not spoiled by — our good fortune.
Keith Loud and Nina Sand-Loud
Norwich
Dartmouth reopening plan
is ‘reckless’
We, in this fabulous Upper Valley treasure many amenities which are obvious to us all so I will not pontificate upon them.
As an individual who has worked and survived throughout this entire world-wide debacle, so far, I am puzzled by the totally reckless and unbelievably irresponsible decision by Dartmouth to open campus and allow approximately 2,400 people, some from “hot zones” around the country, to come here.
Dartmouth, you succumbed to pressure from outside sources to disfigure the Baker Library tower! I revisit this issue only to advise that you do not ignore the welfare, safety and well-being of the communities around you that support your institution. We are not outside sources. We live here.
And I will leave you with this … Upper Valley Lives Matter!
Donald B. Perron
Lebanon
Sen. Dan Feltes has been a great leader in the New Hampshire Senate, guiding legislation through a legislative body Republicans dominated for several years. We’ve heard much about the COVID-19 pandemic — Dan’s policy proposals for dealing with public health are stronger than Sununu’s.
What will really make Dan’s administration most meaningful for the future of older residents of New Hampshire (like me) and younger residents like the college students I taught for several decades, are his efforts modernizing New Hampshire’s energy policy, which Sununu has done everything he can to obstruct. As a member of the Senate Energy committee for six years, Dan led the way on everything from solar power, to energy efficiency, to distributed generation, to net metering. The only clean energy bills that Sununu signed recently have been Dan’s bills on community aggregation and community power, along with one bill on community solar farms. Dan is the only candidate for governor with a clean energy plan, which he calls “Green Jobs, Green Future.”
Some running for office this year have attempted to twist Dan’s position on natural gas. Dan repeatedly said that if the Public Utilities Commission determined that a connection between two existing pipelines in New Hampshire (the Granite Bridge) was necessary to guarantee folks can heat their homes in the winter, Dan supports it. But now that additional capacity has opened up in an existing pipeline. Dan encourages using this pipeline to meet current heating needs instead. This has transpired, so now there is no need for new fossil fuel infrastructure in New Hampshire.
With wildfires raging again in California, hurricanes aiming for the Gulf Coast and the snowpack in the White Mountains shrinking, even people who have seen climate problems as an issue for the future are becoming climate change voters.
I am supporting a candidate who tells the truth about the climate, someone who is a climate champion. I am voting for Dan Feltes in the Democratic primary for governor on Sept. 8.
Robert L. Welsch
Lebanon
Margaret Drye is an
energetic candidate
Our neighbor, Margaret Drye is running for the New Hampshire House of Representatives and we should be glad she is. Margaret knows our district and the towns in it and knows the state about as well as anyone. She should: She’s served the towns, district, county and state in a variety ways on a variety of commissions and committees, in addition to her service as an EMT.
She’s been involved in organizing and managing a 4-H group. She’s served on numerous committees and study groups for her town: the Finance Committee, the town’s 250th Anniversary celebration and water district moderator. She’s been a trainer for the Red Cross, a 12-year board member of the Hanover Co-op, and has been a trustee of the Big E for six years.
This is far from a complete list of Margaret’s efforts and accomplishments. I could go on for a few more paragraphs.
Margaret is an intelligent, thoughtful, experienced, hard-working, involved, even-handed, fair-minded, energetic, enthusiastic woman. I can’t imagine a better qualified person than Margaret Drye to represent our district in the House.
J. Cheston M. Newbold
Cornish
Please build affordable housing in Lebanon
This letter is in support of the affordable housing down the street from me (“Lebanon Housing Authority’s plan for 44 units to go before Planning Board,” Aug. 10). There used to be a home in that spot years ago. Only please be honest and make it affordable. Not the bait and switch that others have pulled in town.
After SAU 88 practically stole and then burned one house and tore down another, half my neighborhood was gone and I was in tears. We still miss our neighbors and their great Halloween decorations.
The people who live in affordable housing are the same people we eat next to in the diners, bring the food to the table, check out our purchases at the stores, fill the grocery shelves, etc. Hard working people just trying to pay their bills and raise their families. So I say, Yes — build it!
Connie Kroner
Lebanon
How we can
stop the madness
If you have read any of my letters in recent years, you know that I believe two things: one, that Donald Trump is a sociopath who is afflicted with profound mental illness (narcissistic personality disorder at least); and two, that we as a nation are experiencing a collective cognitive meltdown and that our ability to employ reason (front brain activity) is slowly evaporating.
If you spend any time at all studying history, you will recognize that these two dynamics (in concert of course with other cataclysms, and we have many from which to choose: climate crisis, pandemic, exploding poverty, an internet replete with seductive conspiracy theories, etc.) are pretty much always the harbingers of disaster. A leader with no moral compass, with no soul, with an insatiable need to be worshipped and a nation of tens of millions whose every action is increasingly dictated not by reflection and analysis but instead by big feelings that they, without the capability of circumspection, must believe, lest their very identities blink out — this is the moment in which all hell usually breaks loose.
There are ways to stop the madness. If we all turned off our devices and sat in quiet reflection for a few months, if we meditated on such things as loving kindness and compassion, we might be OK. If our president, for some inexplicable reason, left office quietly in November, we might reclaim some manner of mass neurological balance. But history teaches us that nations with horrible and destructive men at the helm, and nations whose people are in full-on amygdala hijack, more often than not have to go through hell before awakening to the destruction that they have brought upon themselves. It is quite possible that years from now Americans will emerge from our wicked and zombie-like somnambulence and wonder how we let this happen.
In the interim, may whatever god you believe in have mercy on us. We are going to need it.
Dan Weintraub
Quechee