Letters to the Editor 05/01/2013

To the Editor:

My husband and I visit from the UK each year to fly our plane around the beautiful Northwest. We love visiting Sisters Airpark for $100 hamburgers and it is great to see on the website that the runway is being resurfaced. This great facility allows us to regularly visit your lovely town of Sisters, which we enjoy so much.

We look forward to visiting in the summer.

Collette and Chris Slack (South Coast, UK)

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To the Editor:

I was selected as a teaching fellow by the Oregon Humanities to help plan and run an Idea Lab during the summer for rising seniors where we will examine the concept of happiness from multiple perspectives.

I was granted permission to teach the curriculum as an elective class this past winter, and it was very rewarding to see the students explore and wrestle with big ideas around happiness.

The work was rigorous and pithy, ranging from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," to Voltaire's "Candide," to poems, essays and Ted Talks. At the end of the trimester the students pursued varied projects to put to use their learning and ranged from the implementation of standing desks in my classroom, to a movement to reduce single-use plastics in Sisters, and another compared happiness at High Desert high schools through comparing statistics on attendance, participation, and life after high school.

In one of the projects, Emily Ausman and Collette Cokesh-Carhart surveyed the high school students and asked them to list their five favorite things about living in Sisters. They took the results and created a T-shirt that reflect students' attitudes. The students are selling the T-shirts and will donate the proceeds to our Sparrow, Abel.

The results of this class are still being played out. This summer, as part of my fellowship, 11 Outlaws applied and were selected to attend the Idea Lab. These Outlaws will return, and I am confident will help make Sisters High School an even happier place.

Bill Rexford

Teacher, Sisters High School

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To the Editor:

Continued incompetence at the State Department.

John Kerry states that the investigation into Bengazi should be wound up so he can proceed with more important issues. Not to mention the fact that he used the wrong title in calling the singing in Boston, Sweet Adeline. This man continues to represent the U.S. in a capacity that shows his incompetent professional abilities.

I was appalled at the statement made by Hilary Clinton that what difference does it make. We lost one of the finest people in our government and she is responsible! I don't understand why the House of Representatives didn't make her sweat. They had an opportunity to get to her and they passed, based on some sense of loyalty to her and the State Department. Where was her loyalty to her ambassador when she knew there were emergent security issues in Bengazi? I thought there should have been charges leveled against her and she should have been dismissed in shame. How can she just be let off the hook and allowed to return to her privileged life?

There are more comments being made this morning about her lies in this regard. She lied about memos, bearing her signature, requesting additional security. She needs to do some time in jail to refresh her memory. Instead she plans to make plans to run for the presidency.

God help us all.

Terry Burke