Real heroism goes unnoticed

Re: “Investing in recovery,” June 16:

The photo of Ms. Vanwert and her daughters has a perceptible glow to it, an “aura” of mystery and wonder.

Nothing personal, and I wish Ms. Vanwert the very best – her daughters, too – but what, may I be pardoned for asking, have any of them ever done to merit being so enshrined in dazzling color on the front page of the daily newspaper? Why make heroes of the wrong people and for the wrong reasons?

Where I once worked, every now and then an employee just suddenly disappeared. Upon inquiry, we would learn that he/she had enrolled in either an alcohol or drug rehabilitation program. After an absence of several weeks, months, whatever, the employee would come back to work and, invariably, would be treated like returning royalty. One could almost hear a band playing Handel’s “See, the Conquering Hero Comes” as he/she strode through the door that first day back at work.

Are not the real heroes the ones who doggedly plug away at obscure and monotonous jobs? They stay off alcohol. They stay off drugs. They seldom even take a day off sick. What honors/recognition do they ever get? They ask for none; they receive none.

Dennis Roberts

Spokane

Vanwert photo shameful

Livid is not a strong enough to describe my feelings about your June 16 large front-page photo and article about the Vanwert family. How in the name of all that’s right could you print that picture!

Vanwert’s daughters appeared absolutely mortified. Do you think that in their young lives, they have not endured enough with Mother’s problem? Do you not have the brains or the compassion for what these girls are now going through at school?

This was sensationalism at its sleaziest. And you cannot correct the damage you have done to them.

Sidney Blomquist

Spokane

Spokane needs cheery face

I was recently in downtown Wenatchee and noticed that they have a very inviting look about them. They have “city baskets” hung up all along the downtown main street. They were gorgeous and bursting with color. My wish for downtown Spokane is that we have that same inviting look about us. It wouldn’t take much; we are cleaning it up down there, but we need that added welcome. What a difference it could make.

Come on Spokane, put on your cheery face.

Debbie A. Nedrow

Spokane

Marijuana war misdirected

It didn’t make the papers but Darren McCrea, founder of SpoCannabis patients club and the most vocal and public representative of the medical marijuana movement, was recently arrested for sale of a controlled substance to five people. In one of the TV news reports, a police spokesman said “There’s no difference selling marijuana and selling OxyContin.”

OxyContin kills people. It is a pharmaceutical, highly addictive narcotic. Marijuana, the dried flower of a plant, has never had one single death attributed to it in the over 4,000-year human history of its use. There is no lethal dose of marijuana. OxyContin, also called hillbilly heroin, causes overdoses, tragedies of addiction, death.

The same cannot be said of marijuana. It is a plant from God that has scientifically proven medicinal uses, documented over hundreds of years, for a variety of illnesses and conditions. It is not physically addictive.

If we put as much money into going after really bad drugs that hurt and kill people then maybe we could save lives. Instead the federal government only grants local law enforcement funding for marijuana eradication, especially for the eradication of the medical marijuana movement. Darren McCrea is a prisoner of the “war on marijuana.”

Janice Porter

Spokane

Ban lazy hunting

Regarding Jeff Holmes’ letter of June 14, “ORVs endanger hunting tradition,” I totally agree and only have this to add: If you are so overweight that you can’t hunt without these machines, then you shouldn’t hunt. Get in shape, harvest it and then pack it out on your own. The only exception is, as Mr. Holmes stated, disabled and senior hunters. It should be a state law during hunting season.

Steven Rowse

Spokane

Walk off high gas prices

My wife and I live six blocks from downtown Ritzville and nine times out of 10 we walk. I filled my pickup in February 2007 and drove it 100 (one hundred) miles as of February 2008. I am 71 years old and walk or ride my bike most of the time. We have neighbors who drive all the time, some who live within two blocks from the center of town.

If you want to get rid of the high price of gasoline then you need to lessen the demand, and to do that is to walk it off.

Jim Lisk

Ritzville

Retention key to improvement

I read Mr. Dad’s (Armin Brott) article of June 16 regarding a father’s question of making his son repeat first grade. His response was it would “be detrimental to his education.” What a crock! He is wrong on several counts.

1. He further says the “no-nonsense” approach (holding the student accountable) is often pursued despite strong evidence that it doesn’t work, or worse, it does harm. What evidence?

2. “Today, educators want to … hold kids back when they come up short.” Certainly not true in Spokane District 81.

3. “Retention … can be very traumatic for kids. No matter how nicely you put it, they’ll feel an overwhelming stigma, one they’ll never forget.” That’s called failure – one of the most powerful motivators anyone can experience. No one should be denied their constitutional right to fail.

4. What is the logic in sending a student to the next grade level when he has demonstrated inability to succeed in the one just completed? Learning is a sequential process. Necessary building blocks must be in place.

Retention is necessary to improve overall quality in education.

Gene Sivertson

Retired math department chairman,

Lewis and Clark High School, Spokane

Don’t cut off food to spite OPEC

It is interesting how people propose solutions to a problem without understanding the problem or the consequences of their solutions. Lloyd Zimmerman’s recent letter (“Price turnabout is fair play,” June 17) suggesting that the U.S. should sell grain to OPEC at $136 a bushel in order to compensate for $136-a-barrel oil is a case in point.

In his haste to punish OPEC, Mr. Zimmerman neglects one crucial factor. OPEC is not selling oil at $136 a barrel. If they were, then the oil companies would not be making any profit. Conversely if grain was selling for $136 a bushel that would also be the price that Americans would pay. So just to spite OPEC, Mr. Zimmerman would rather that we all starve. Good choice.

Ron Large

Spokane

Keep U.S. oil underground

I am growing wary of Mr. Bush’s last few months as president. His latest “idea” to reopen offshore drilling strikes me as being short-sighted at best. Certain elements of society seem to believe that the faster we can get oil out of the ground the better. How this helps future generations I have no idea, but I can only assume that the people who think this way are not seeing far beyond their noses.

U.S. oil reserve estimates are 7.6 billion barrels – about 2-3 years of consumption at our current rate. Might we eventually need to go after such environmentally expensive sources of oil? Of course. But why not wait until the drilling technology becomes even safer? The value of the oil will presumably be much higher then as well – sort of like having a long-term federal bank account. And maybe we’ll also be much wiser in our consumption by that time.

In the near term, we need to use progressive taxation to enable poorer Americans to better afford the gasoline they require to live their lives. And we all need to figure out how to better live with less oil. It will happen eventually; why not start now?

Jeffrey D. Ellingson

Liberty Lake

In defense of Lincoln

William Hall’s letter of June 10 quotes from an 1858 speech, in which Abraham Lincoln stated he did not favor the social and political equality of blacks and whites. Hall then implies that Lincoln would not be proud of Barack Obama’s accomplishments this election season.

Yet Lincoln, just two months earlier, proclaimed during the great presidential debates of 1858: “Let us discard all this quibbling about … this race or that race being inferior … and unite as one people … until we shall once more stand up believing that all men are created equal.”

Lincoln’s views toward blacks progressed after he became president. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation and supported the 13th Amendment in 1865, which eliminated the practice of slavery in the U.S. These bold moves endeared him to black Americans but likely contributed to his assassination.

Lincoln, like Obama, was a lawyer, served as a state legislator and congressman from Illinois, and was relatively young when he ran for president. If brought forward in time, Lincoln would surely be surprised at the progress made between blacks and whites in this country. I am confident, as a student of and distant relative of Abe, the surprise would be a pleasant one.

Mike Dempsey

Spokane Valley

Unvarnished McCain unsettling

In “McCain finds comfort zone” (June 13), Mark McKinnon, McCain’s former media consultant, says, “I think when people see McCain unvarnished, they like what they see.” Really?

Sure. Let’s vote for the one with a 0 percent rating on women’s issues from NARAL and Planned Parenthood; the one (known as “McNasty” in high school) with a notorious violent explosive temper, who dumped his formerly beautiful ex-wife after she was disfigured in a car accident, having waited faithfully for years, raising their three children while he was a POW; the one who began carousing and extramarital affairs even before they separated – then settled on Cindy, his current beer heiress trophy wife.

Let’s elect – for our next president – the one, according to Cliff Schechter’s book “The Real McCain,” whose uncontrollable rage once boiled over (in full view of aides and reporters) and who yelled at Cindy (with “unvarnished” candor) calling her a trollop and another obscene term for a woman – and explained later that he’d had a long day.

Presidents have a lot of long days.

Lucy Jeanne

Deer Park