Letters to the Editor 6/26/2024

Destroying America

To the Editor:

I appreciated Steve Woodside’s letter to the editor on June 19, where he wrote “the voting public can sit on a fence complaining about their choices in this election cycle, or they can understand where we are as a country, that there are people who actively want to destroy us from inside and outside our country.” The fact that so much threat to our country is coming from the “inside” is what is so chilling, and it is time we woke up to why that is the case.

My friends, take a good hard look at the American university system. A recent book, “The College Scam,” by Charlie Kirk, lays out a compelling and fact-based case for how “America’s universities are bankrupting and brainwashing away the future of America’s youth.” I would amend that to “the future of America.” Full stop.

As a former staunch liberal for two and a half decades, I would have been quick to cry foul at my present claim. But I can’t deny it any longer. Things have gone too far. In the last 10+ years, one protest has succeeded another: Occupy Wall Street, Minimum Wage, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, George Floyd, and now Anti-Israel/Pro-Hamas. These movements are skillful at offering a sheen of justice, but look a bit deeper to see they are the antithesis of justice, tolerance, and peace. They are, as Mr. Woodside points out, just thinly veiled Marxist ideologies intent on destroying the United States. And these ideologies are being pumped out of the American university system at an alarming rate.

So before you send your child/grandchild off to college or you ask a recent graduate “where are you going to college?” consider Mr. Kirk’s claims. The future of America suggests the question we ought to ask our young people is not “where are you going to college” but “why are you going to college?” And we need to take a good, hard look at how and why we continue to uphold an industry that is bent on destroying America.

Dawn Bernhardt

Rally for Green Ridge

To the Editor:

On Friday, June 28, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.), a group of concerned citizens will be rallying outside the Sisters Ranger District in protest of the Green Ridge timber sale. We ask that the Forest Service not move forward with its Draft Decision to cut over five million board feet of lumber across the 20,000 acre project area — home to black bear, elk, mule deer, red fox, marten, spotted owl, and grey wolves. As humans, we should be protectors and guardians of this special place, not destroyers. 

The Forest Service rationale is “restoration,” “fire resiliency,” “forest health,” etc. Ironically, all of these objectives would be best met by leaving the area alone. There are limited interventions that could be worthwhile for resetting some natural processes, but we must begin trusting in nature and let her adapt and build resiliency. Industrial forestry is incompatible with biodiversity and forest health objectives. 

Areas with dense vegetation hold more moisture and prevent wind from fanning flames and blowing embers far afield and igniting communities. Additionally, the Forest Service has not been transparent around mature and old growth logging standards for Green Ridge. There are healthy and unique mixed conifer stands within the sale area that need to be preserved.

While we oppose the project as it is currently conceived, we are advocating for a first of its kind rewilding project here. The Metolius Basin is the perfect place to carry out this vision.

We need a new way of forest management going forward here on Green Ridge, and elsewhere. The Forest Service should drop the project and work with the public to design a rewilding project that creates core wildlife habitat — for the benefit of all. 

Adam Bronstein, Susan Prince

Wild Ecosystems Alliance

Paula Hood

Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project

Running of the bulls

To the Editor:

I suggest that, henceforth, the “Sisters Rodeo” be renamed “The Running of the Bulls at Sisters.” The brave bull “Party Bus” shall be sent to Pamplona, Spain for the annual “Running of the Bulls” to represent the United States. The woman of Terrebonne who was tossed shall be ranked an honorary “bull runner.”

American novelist Ernest Hemingway, who ran with the bulls in Spain, would most certainly be proud.

Randall Raeder