Dear Editor:
Bob, I found your article on the hatchery renovations quite amusing as well as a reminder as to the waste of our taxpayer dollars. The wastewater could not be dumped into the river due to EPA standards?
My question is, what about the waste that is already in the river from the native fish, birds and multitudes of other wildlife as well as domestic life?
I cannot believe that this effluent will destroy the river. It will be recycled and cleaned by nature in the natural course of the river cleaning itself. Just another example of the government (us) protecting us from ourselves.
Larry M. Head
Hotchkiss, CO
Dear Editor:
October 2002. Does anyone remember it? Or has 9/11 so erased everything that nothing else matters anymore? Well, I remember it for two reasons. One, it was the month that Paul Wellstone, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, was killed in a mysterious plane crash, along with his wife and daughter. And had that not happened, he might have run for the presidency in 2004 and been elected, and might still be president, and if that was so, maybe we wouldn’t be in the two wars and financial mess we are in now, because he was a very practical and sensible fellow who had a way of really inspiring young people, and he had quite a following among them.
Also in October of 2002 there was a march for peace going on all over the world, and millions of people participated in it, and I and my son encountered some of the marchers in Glenwood Springs when we were on our way home from a trip to Denver. And being peace lovers ourselves, we joined the march, and met some folks whose zeal for what they were trying to do really impressed us.
But when we got back home to Delta County we were dismayed to hear that a very different kind of demonstration had been going on in our home place, and those demonstrators seemed to be thrilled by the prospect of going to war, and they felt that by being that way they were proving they were patriots.
Well, guess who won that disagreement? And here we are now caught up in two wars – one being the longest one our country has ever been in – and trying desperately to find ways of getting out of them. Plus, the enormous financial costs of fighting those wars have had a huge impact on our economy, yet almost no one talks about that. Instead some of us talk about the high taxes things like health bills will cost, while we ignore what the wars cost us in blood and treasure, and don’t mention the names of those who sold us war as the answer to everything, but blame those who got stuck with the cleaning up.
And where are all those flags that were flying everywhere during the lead up to the war, and the “Support the Troops” stickers that were on almost every car? And just what, precisely, did those car owners do for the troops I wonder. Do they send money to veterans’ organizations like I do, or was their support more figurative than actual? And will they keep on supporting the troops and their families after the wars are over, or will they just forget about them the way people often do, once the bombs stop falling.
It seems to me that we Americans have the attention spans of two year olds, and we whimper and whine just like two year olds do when they can’t have their own way all the time. But two year olds grow up eventually, whereas many of us “patriots” never do. We just keep on whimpering and whining and looking for easy answers, but we never blame the ones who are really responsible for our troubles – ourselves.
Marjorie Johnson
Eckert, CO
