Letters, letters, letters

The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer's name, address and phone number. Letters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday.

To the Editor:

Regarding the location of the Bend Trap Club on Highway 20, southwest of the viewpoints, my response is "count me in, I don't want it there, either."

And I think that if the trap club persists in their pursuit of that 240 acres, they will learn that, now that the news of the club's plans has spread, there are a large number of residents that are very upset about it.

Mr. Wright's letter (The Nugget, February 18) ignores the fact that the proposed site is in a Wildlife Area Combining Zone (Tumalo deer winter range) that specifically prohibits relatively benign uses, such as churches, veterinary clinics, and fishing lodges.

And they want to locate a "firearms training facility" there!

Huh?

I would venture that a vast majority of the public would not want a shooting range in their back yard, and the club president's recent characterization of opponents in a local publication as "anti-everything people" didn't win the club many new friends.

The club's apparent justification for building there, rather than the much more rural east county, is that out east the wind is "inhospitable." That thinly-veiled brand of spin, in my opinion, doesn't hold water, as the wind in the Plainview area blows often and hard.

It is my impression that the primary motivation for this new location for the trap club is the commuting convenience of its members, even if the wildlife and the quality of life and the property values of nearby residents are trampled in the process.

Club members certainly have a right to enjoy their sport, but such a facility should only be located in a sparsely populated area to minimize the negative impacts of the gunfire.

Don McCartney

Plainview

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To the Editor:

It is comforting to know that Jerry Wright of the Bend Trap Club is an expert in so many areas. These include acoustics, sound attenuation, meteorology and knowing wind speed without measurement.

His expertise is described in his letter to The Nugget on February 18 taking exception to Jim Anderson's letter on the alleged new location for this club.

I live at the east end of Plainview Road, back in a small valley, two miles as the crow flies from the alleged site location and one mile off Highway 20. If the wind is from the south, I can hear the road noise. The sound bounces off the sides of the nearby tree-lined butte.

Vegetation and terrain are not going to diminish gunshot noise.

As for our gentle winds, a neighbor's anemometer has recorded wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour. Two years ago a field just north of the alleged location was plowed for planting and one of the "gentle winds" from the south created a dust cloud reportedly seen as far away as Madras.

How does this compare to the Millican area?

Before going to the County Planning Commission and/or County Commissioners, the Bend Trap Club should gather some solid evidence. Three years of wind speed measurements should be taken at several proposed locations, before proclaiming an area has "less wind."

Noise measurements should be taken, to prove or disprove the actual noise and its attenuation. Evaluators should include neighborhood dogs, including ours. The dogs won't be voting but their owners will.

I have confidence that smart county commissioners will weigh the political ramifications of voters in our area against the voters affected by trap club noise in the Millican area.

Darrell Pieper

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To the Editor:

It is unbelievable to me that you would choose to support an outrageous, bold-faced lie by posting the political cartoon denigrating President Bush's service in the Air National Guard.

That position is espoused by only the most extreme left wing of the Democrat Party and bears no resemblance to the truth. Truth apparently doesn't matter to you. It only matters that the charge has been made and if you can make the charge sound serious enough to get your ideological followers to pick up on it, then it serves your purpose.

I was a pilot in the air reserve forces and it is obvious that none of you have a clue about reserve duty and I'm not even sure you know what honorable service is. Oh, I keep forgetting, it doesn't matter. You just want to keep a lie alive.

The inference can reasonably be made that you are supporting John Kerry by publishing this cartoon, so let's talk about his service to our country. He was honored for his service in Vietnam and I respect him for his bravery.

However, he came back and dishonored all of the rest of us who served by false and misleading testimony before Congress. If what he said was true, if he really witnessed the atrocities he reported, he had a responsibility as an officer to stop those actions. If he participated in those actions, he should have been court-martialed for gross violations of military standards of conduct.

He may not have even known Hanoi Jane, the most visible traitor of the war, but he did attend the same anti-war rallies and he deceptively threw "his" medals away to make himself look good. Ask a POW about the suffering those types of actions caused them. For that he should be held responsible.

John Kerry our next Commander-in-Chief? No thank you!

Col. John Miller, USAF (Ret.)

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To the Editor:

I've bitten my tongue many times in the last several years over Froma Harrop's and others' columns. But her column (on stem cell research) in last week's Nugget just can't go unanswered.

First, the insinuation that "Religious fundamentalists" are just back-woodsy ignorant and hopelessly behind the scientific times is not true. Many intelligent, sophisticated, highly-educated people, including scientists of all persuasions, hold to the creation world-view, which is very adequately supported by true science, in addition to agreeing with the Bible.

It is worthy of being considered alongside the theory of evolution, which is a faith-based world-view that doesn't stand up to honest scrutiny.

Froma decried "anti-abortion people using advanced medical technology to keep.... Terri Schiavo artificially alive." She is just being fed and hydrated intravenously. She is awake, alert, smiles at her parents and the nurses, communicates with her eyes and attempts to speak. Since she has not clearly indicated a wish to be starved to death, her parents and others who care about her, and care about others who cannot speak for themselves, are fighting to prevent that from happening.

Stem cells from embryos so far have only shown negative results in trying to cure diseases. All of the hoopla and self- righteous campaigning to save mankind with cloning have yielded nothing good.

In the meantime, though most of the media have ignored it, stem-cell research without the moral problems involved in cloning has been quietly moving forward. Using cord blood stem cells and adult stem cells from a person's own bone marrow or blood has shown great promise in treating Parkinson's patients and heart-transplant candidates. Other research is looking positive for treatment of diabetes and severed spinal cords. By restricting funding for cloning, and diverting it to this morally acceptable alternative, truly promising stem-cell research can move forward.

The President has no desire to "deny the public the benefits of stem-cell research." If Froma thinks cloning is the only means of providing stem-cells, she needs to study her subject before she presents herself as an authority to the American public.

Lorene Richardson

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To the Editor:

In her letter published February 18, Pamela Jo Hunter claims Bush misled the country into "an unnecessary war."

Like Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist who said you repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it, Ms. Hunter repeats Democratic claims the Iraq war was trumped up and premeditated. Ms. Hunter offers no proof, she just makes assertions. However, she ignores a lot of recent history.

In 1998, Congress passed, with strong support from Democrats, and President Clinton signed, legislation making it U.S. policy to seek regime change in Iraq. Whatever plans Bush was making for a war in Iraq, he was continuing the policy a Democratic administration had instituted (but done nothing to implement).

September 11 demonstrated terrorists could strike American cities with horrific consequences. The very real threat became terrorists obtaining a WMD, nuclear, biological or chemical, and using it to kill tens of thousands of Americans.

Who had such weapons? Iraq -- so said the United Nations, and the intelligence agencies of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia as well as the CIA. Hussein had used them in the past -- twice. We found some after Gulf War I, but it was known he had had tons more that we couldn't account for.

Oh, and since the Iraq war, we have found many connections between the Hussein regime and terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.

President Bush stated clearly we could not wait for a threat of such magnitude to become imminent -- the WMDs are too easy to conceal and can be devastating once released. We could not expect our intelligence agencies to provide "definitive evidence" of WMDs about terrorist groups and closed societies.

The case for pre-emptive war was precisely that we could not know for sure one way or the other.

Jonathan M. Kahnoski

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To the Editor:

I would like to suggest a reason why there is limited, or almost no participation, in many of the community meetings in Sisters. I'm surprised someone hasn't figured it out before this.

I think they schedule the meetings at an hour when most people are having dinner. People who work, and/or who have children in school are having dinner sometime between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. or there are after school activities to be involved in.

If the community meetings were scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. instead of 5:30 p.m. maybe, just maybe, there would be wider participation and turnout of the community.

I'm sure the lack of turnout is not because the issues are not of interest to the people, its because the meetings are right during the dinner hour. How about changing the meeting times?

Respectfully,

Diana Raske Lovgren

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To the Editor:

I would like to express my thanks to the Sisters Fire Department for finding the time capsule in the old middle school.

The capsule was placed there in 1985. It was a project that my eighth grade history class undertook. It was placed in a wall of the new addition with the idea that when the building was destroyed it would be opened.

When learning that the building was to be burned I went to the building with the idea of finding it. Twenty years had passed and the memory I had of its location was a little blurry. The firemen were very patient and allowed me to tear up the walls where I thought the time capsule might be located. All I managed to do was make more work for the firemen.

I resigned myself to the fact that the capsule was lost. The firemen assured me that they would continue the search. After the building had been burned I learned that the time capsule had been found. Needless to say I was very surprised.

Thanks again for your patience and understanding and in finding the time capsule itself.

Jeff Barton

History teacher, Sisters High School

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To the Editor:

During the February 9 school board meeting, state school report cards were mentioned briefly.

And while I agree wholeheartedly that "those of us in the know" realize that all three of the schools in our district are exceptional, I feel it is important to single out the fact that Sisters Elementary School received the state's rating of Exceptional for the second year in a row.

Whether you agree or disagree with the way the state grades its schools, one thing for sure is that it is very difficult to retain the exceptional rating.

It means that the elementary school's test scores were up and that individual attendance was up, to name a few of the criteria.

I agree that this whole district is exceptional, but I also know that a large portion of our graduating students start school at Sisters Elementary and it is there that they are started on the path to success that they will achieve throughout their school career.

So kudos to you Mr. Comfort and your entire staff on the State of Oregon's Exceptional rating!

Sincerely,

Heather Wester