Letters to the Editor 11/25/2015

To the Editor:

While President Obama is pardoning two turkeys for Thanksgiving, every one of us can exercise that same presidential power by choosing a nonviolent Thanksgiving observance that spares a turkey's life.

And here are some good reasons:

• You can brag about pardoning a turkey - like Obama.

• You truly are what you eat. Who wants to be a "butterball"?

• Fruits and vegetables don't have to carry government warning labels.

• You won't sweat the environment-and-food-resources-devastation guilt trip.

• You won't spend a sleepless night wondering how the turkey lived and died.

• Your body will appreciate a holiday from saturated fat, cholesterol, and hormones.

• You won't have to call Poultry Hotline to keep your family out of the emergency room.

Seriously, this Thanksgiving let's give thanks for our good fortune, health, and happiness with a life-affirming, cruelty-free feast of vegetables, fruits, and grains.

Our own dinner will feature a soy- or wheat-based roast, mashed potatoes, stuffed squash, candied yams, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. An Internet search on "vegetarian Thanksgiving" is getting us more recipes and other useful information than we could possibly use.

Siegfried Neufhaus

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To the Editor:

Have recently read the history of Henry Kissinger, a book which implied that many in national office and striving to get in have very little knowledge of the tasks they are to handle.

The Russian airliner, the Paris tragedy and other ISIS cruelties led me to another book just out: "1944 - FDR and the Year that Changed History." I will substitute 2015 and ISIS and reach the same conclusions! In this book, the struggle to recognize the danger to our country until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor is like America now and the danger of not confronting ISIS. It is a "wait long enough and it will go away" approach.

Didn't we just read that Washington is its next target?

Some quotes are in order: "After the Jap attack, White House architects oversaw construction of a bomb shelter. There was a hitch - the army was so short of anti-aircraft weaponry that military planners decided to install mainly replicas of painted wood."

These are military planners? How did we ever win the war?

"As for the few real guns on the rooftops, only after the war was it discovered that the ammunition stacked beside them was the wrong size." And finally, "In any case, there was no need for all this with the conflict an ocean away!"

Are we now an ocean away from ISIS with that same White House as their next target? Are we still thinking it is 1944?

Russell Williams

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To The Nugget:

Thank you, Tony Blok, for your op-ed of concern about the roundabout and the time involved to get the facts. Why put more stress on the truck drivers? They have enough to put up with all the car drivers.

Then the mother, with two tots on foot, a stroller with a child, plus a dog on a leash! Service dogs, these dear animals: they do a wonderful job. But roundabouts - confusion. And the guests at the Ponderosa Lodge, they have had a long day on the road. They would like to walk, get some exercise. Sorry, not safe. So back in the car to cross Hwy. 20 to get something to eat.

At least we all know what Red means, and Green the same. But we don't know what the person in front of us "means" (STOP!) to let someone cross the circle; and this we may stop, but the person on a cell phone behind us doesn't.

We all want safety. Traffic lights give us this.

Cath Leigh-Leonard