Letters To The Editor

ANIMALS

Story just doesn’t fly

Not only was I intrigued by your front page article “Gene transplant creates gay flies,” but I found it totally demonstrative of what your paper finds to be front page fare.

The only “fly-in-the-ointment” I noted was lack of cost data for the research. Could this be another example of our tax dollars at work?

A hidden aspect of this startling scientific discovery is the issue of gay rights. Are we now allowed to swat only those flies with other-than-alternative lifestyles?

Will this whole issue fly in the face of political correctness when it is realized that the testing was only conducted on fruit flies?

I’m sure the readers will be in a buzz over this article. Michael K. Jennings Sprague

We need Endangered Species Act

I am very concerned about the future of the Endangered Species Act.

With the U.S. population alone predicted to swell by at least 50 percent in the next half century, we are playing a major part in the surge predicted to extinguish onefourth of the planet’s species by the year 2050. I believe the main problem is we are running out of land. The ones who are suffering seem to be the animals and plants that have out-existed us by thousands of years.

With Slade Gorton and other senators supporting a bill that would take restrictions off public and private lands, and considering our Congress, I am worried that the species won’t get much of a voice in their favor. Eliminating species and whole ecosystems deprives future generations of many of the aesthetic pleasures of the natural world.

I think that quite a few people owe their lives to species that some may call “frivolous” or “unimportant.” For example, penicillin, or the rosy periwinkle which has greatly helped many with childhood leukemia. This argument may be overworked, but one never knows which humble organism may hold the cure to cancer or AIDS.

Sure, there are going to be jobs lost, but economies can turn around and create just as many new jobs, that was pointed out in the article printed June 1 about fishermen gaining 72,000 jobs while loggers lost 13,137. I think the loggers will soon go out of business anyway, considering the rapid rate at which our old growth forests are being clear-cutted.

I agree that the Act needs reform, but I think many of the principles already incorporated in it are best left as they are. Once we start considering economic and other impacts of listing a species, there will be no controlled protection. I think we need to provide absolute, secure protection for these endangered creatures. There will always be profits made and lost, but many of these creatures will never again be seen on Earth unless somebody speaks up for them.

Only genuine determination on the part of federal and state agencies to conserve endangered species, cooperation from the private sector, and public support and vigilance can change the fate of thousands of species that desperately need help. Julia A. Williams Spokane

Wolves have a right to exist

The battle is not over for reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho.

Groups such as the American Farm Bureau and Mountain State Legal Foundation have fought the wolf reintroduction program every step of the way, causing costly delays.

Now that the first group of wolves has been released, these groups, along with Sen. Conrad Burns, fight for the funds of the wolf recovery to be cut.

The wolf is a symbol of the West: without it, a part of a great heritage of the West is lost.

The wolf has as much right to roam the earth as we do. We have no right to pick and choose what animals we wish to accompany us here on Earth.

The wolf has been wrongfully persecuted for over 100 years, during which the entire wolf population was nearly eradicated through the use of traps, guns, poison and aerial hunting.

It is time for the new environmental-friendly generation to stand up for the wolf and put away the childish beliefs of the big bad wolf. Shay Logue Cheney

IN THE PAPER

Slice lacks any redeeming value

As a subscriber to your paper for the past four years, I have been satisfied with the content and most of your featured articles, editorials, sports and news.

There is one feature that my wife refuses to read and I have trouble understanding: The Slice.

It is neither amusing, entertaining, informative nor any of interest whatsoever.

Thinking that I may have been missing the point of the whole thing, I read it again and again, only to reaffirm my first impression, the Slice is nowhere.

Paul Turner may be a very fine writer, but I think he needs a new format. His talents should be put to better use than putting together such an inane article as the Slice. James T. Kane Hayden Lake

Don’t equate nudity with lewdness

Doug Clark is right. With all the furor over misspent tax dollars, police nationwide should use better discretion and look the other way before harassing peaceable sunbathers. In light of modern (i.e. fallen) fashions in clothing and swimwear, I agree with John Bunyan and John Hall: Nakedness is less provocative than most fashionable clothing. John Paul II put it elegantly when he penned, “Sexual modesty cannot then in any simple way be identified with the use of clothing, nor shamelessness with the absence of clothing and total or partial nakedness.”

I’ve lived a year among nudists. I found no sexual obsession, no rampant promiscuity. Problems among these people usually came from outsiders, “textiles” or “ragmen,” epithets for those who think cloth covers lewdness. Nudists’ children were well-behaved, modest, and uninterested in the wanton activities of their peers. They were polite, old-fashioned kids! Furthermore, many naturists are devout Christians who believe in abstinence, fidelity, and the sanctity of life. Where’s the shame of that?

Anthropology shows that many groups live unclothed and unhampered by rape and prurience. Regarding marriage, Jesus referred to Gen. 2:24. The following verse describes Adam and Eve as naked and unashamed. After sinning, they clothed themselves to hid their guilt from God. The animal skins they were then given would remind them of the sacrificial cost of atonement and the paradise they lost. Legalize public nudity and let’s work on the real problems plaguing us! Stravo Lukos Colville

POLITICIANS

Chenoweth ignorant of Swiss history

If Rep. Helen Chenoweth’s ideas on abolishing the IRS and replacing it with 50 state bureaucracies are no better researched than her comments about Switzerland, people had better be wary.

Rep. Chenoweth said, “The last time the nation of Switzerland was invaded was during the Roman Empire, because every young man of military age must have a gun in his home. That is why Switzerland wasn’t invaded in World War I or II. That’s how it was set up originally in America.”

Chenoweth’s statement infers guns in the home stopped invasions. How about the hundreds of years after Roman conquests and before the development of guns; were all Swiss required to keep sharp sticks as a deterrent?

Switzerland was overrun by Germanic groups after the Romans and were defeated by French forces in 1515. After that invasion, Switzerland started its present policy of neutrality. It was again occupied by French forces in 1798.

As far as World War I and World War II were concerned, Switzerland and four other countries in Europe declared neutrality which was honored by all combatants. Germany cooperated in World War II because it needed free flow of supplies with Italy. Switzerland threatened to blow up rail and highway tunnels if Germany invaded. There was much more to it than a gun in every home.

As far as a gun in every home is concerned, every man is trained in the national militia and is subject to a national call-up between the ages of 20-60. The militia is under the control of the national government, not the states (cantons) nor are they a law unto themselves.

As long as Rep. Chenoweth is using Switzerland as an example, it should be pointed out that the Swiss are very socially progressive. There are provisions for free subsidized health care, including maternity benefits. The country also provides old age pensions and long-term nursing care. I’m sure all of this comes with a price they seem willing to pay.

It is so easy to throw out short sound bites in defense of political agendas and make them sound credible, a practice widely used in today’s politics and talk shows. Issues need to be more deeply thought out and debated. Ted and Mary Shepard Otis Orchards

People battle government for control

For the first time in U.S. history the government of the United States is afraid of its people and the people openly detest their leaders, feeling demagogues are now the rule rather than the exception.

The people fear the entrenched powers in government, aided and abetted by a courtesan press, will use armed force and all sorts of trumped-up charges against them rather than give up their seats in the halls of power to the verdict of the ballot box.

In the mythology about the U.S., it is claimed the U.S. will never die because it, like the Phoenix, has the ability to rise again from its own ashes.

In this round, will the people manage to shake off the demagogues or will the demagogues manage to bring the people, for whom they have only contempt, under the iron heel of their will?

That is the question our founding fathers asked. Whether or not they labored, sacrificed and oceans of blood have been shed in vain is now being put to the test. Sylvia James Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

Euthanasia not the answer to pain

I have found the topic of euthanasia, also known as mercy killing, to be quite controversial.

What began as a school report on the topic became something very personal. I found that even as lowly freshmen, my class and I had some very different views on whether euthanasia is ethically correct or not.

I battled morality and came up with the answer that no, euthanasia is not ethical and the allowance of it in our society is wrong. People far too often overlook the value of life and how it should be held sacred.

Whose ruling determines if an innocent person should be put to death or not? Even if the person is in pain and terminally ill, there’s still life there.

To kill another living, breathing human being is considered murder, and to kill yourself is classified as suicide. In my moral and religious upbringing, both of these supposed answers to pain are considered inexcusably wrong.

Euthanasia is another way to justify death and killing as “the only way out.” Leanne Tumlinson Spokane

Grass burning isn’t all that bad

I have been going crazy from allergies lately from the immense amounts of pollen floating through the air, and today it made me wonder why we don’t create organizations against pine trees for causing us such discomfort every year just so they can reproduce.

We have certainly come up with organizations for just about everything else that makes us worry, including grass burning.

Grass-burning season will soon be upon us again, filling the summer skies with smoke, and driving tourists away.

These are the problems some folks are so worried about for two weeks a year. What most of us don’t know is that for the rest of the year, those same grass fields provide us with oxygen and a wonderful, natural filter for our aquifer.

Without the grass fields, our aquifer would either be too contaminated to drink from or would be infested with huge amounts of chemicals just to keep the water clean.

There are many benefits to two weeks of grass burning a year and the number of drawbacks to extinguishing the fires are just as abundant. We seem to be able to deal with the pine tree pollen every year, accepting it as part of nature, so we should do the same with field burning. After all, grass smoke is natural, too. Wade Jacklin Spokane

Move lines to diminish grooving

Suggestions to highway department regarding “groovy freeways”: Reflecting on today’s article “The daily grind” and the problems created by tires, studded or not, the basic problem seems to stem from all of us using about 10 percent of the freeway surface most of the time.

My suggestion is that the highway department move the divider lines left and right periodically to spread out the surface use and diminish the tendency to cause grooving. George and G.W. Bagby Spokane