Letters to the Editor 06/20/2012

To the Editor:

The Sisters Bookies (Sisters Book Club) thank you for your support in giving the pedestrian flags a chance so far.

Although we were a bit disheartened over Rodeo Weekend to have 14 of our initial 24 disappear, even seeing Rodeo clown J.J. Harrison handing them out during a show, we have not given up!

You hometown folks have cheered the effort and we have received many grateful comments from out-of-towners, as well as observed the usage by wheelchairs, families and individuals. We hope they will become a familiar aid to drivers and walkers as the summer progresses.

Interestingly, people keep telling us about additional cities/towns with long histories of successfully using such flags, such as Newport, and Kirkland, Washington. We are hopeful and determined.

Gratefully,

Alicia Navia, Nola Belding, Wendie Vermillion, Sandy Duncan, Karen Cartmill, Sue Kline, Ann Nora Kruger, Liz Weeks and Helen Schmidling

To the Editor:

Rather than criticizing Rachel Marsden's syndicated column in The Nugget (July 13, page 2) I want to add another facet to it.

I work a couple of days weekly at Sisters Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Periodically, the manager, Robin Tawney, accepts young people, mostly male, who are required to perform community service. These are high-school-age young people with DUI problems, smoking marijuana, anger management - all sorts of problems we know not nor do we really want to know. All we know is that they are required to perform stipulated times of service - that they have a problem!

I am sure that as a parent, grandparent, and even great-grandparent I would say unequivocally that some of these problems start at home, not just with a "buddy."

But when they are there to work, we see to it that they DO work! One can sense a little resentment at first - maybe a guilt complex showing up - but we immediately set them to work. Sometimes it is routine housekeeping, more times it is to share the lifting loads of furniture and other sizeable donations, but they work as adults, are treated as adults and generally behave as adults.

In every case with which I am familiar, they accept the discipline without complaint and in many cases they often express the desire to come back and work as volunteers! This is very rewarding to us and we wind up being not just work "bosses" but friends. They find themselves accepted as adults - react accordingly. None of them is allowed to just sit with an iPod or Facebook, but as an early lesson at being a responsible adult, and they accept it in line with Ms. Marsden's column.

Russell B. Williams

•••

To the Editor,

I was shocked to see a poster for an event stapled to a tree at the corner of Main Avenue and Larch Street. I found it ironic that the poster was a benefit concert for an animal preservation group. It seems folks that expend their time and energy to protect a species of animal would choose to be good stewards of all nature, and not defile a tree or "litter" Sisters in this manner.

Jess Draper