Letters for April 5, 2023
Keep surface water clean
She’s at it again. Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, our self-proclaimed mud puddle manager, wants anybody to be able to do whatever they want regarding standing water. She’s couched it in the confirmation-biased dog whistle of deregulation. As communities all over the U.S. struggle with access to clean water (a basic need), water regulation is a good thing, a necessity.
Who owns a mud puddle’s seepage into our groundwater? Who owns the air containing the evaporation from poisoned puddles? Every now and again, we experience flooding that turns poisoned puddles into creeks feeding rivers. And then, every now and again, we experience a drought in which dust from dried mud puddles often contains arsenic and other chemicals carried by the wind and into our lungs. In this way, we all own surface water and have a communally vested interest in keeping it clean.
The only people pushing for deregulating surface water are those in industries who have a fiduciary duty to profit by cheaply dumping toxic waste into surface water, even when it poisons the well we all use. We all have a right to expect our government ensures breathable air, clean water and a safe food supply. Basic needs must be put before profit, lobbyists and industry campaign donations. We also don’t need a congresswoman indenturing taxpayers to pay for cleaning up future superfund sites created by this reckless action.
Janet Marugg
Clarkston
Another view of the South Hill Library
Contrary to the dismal assessment of the remodeled South Hill Library offered by Jan Woods (Letters, March 29), I think it, as well as the Central Library and the Hive, is terrific. She describes a “sterile hospital setting.” I call it open, airy and colorful. There are dedicated spaces with gallery lighting for works of art on two walls. There are rooms available for use by community groups. There is an enhanced children’s area that, let’s hope, will generate a love of libraries in the young people who follow us. They will be the ones to support libraries into the future.
I first fell in love with libraries when I was 10 years old and lived in a small town in eastern Colorado. That summer, I undertook the project of reading every book on the shelf of that town’s very small public library. Since then, I have had the privilege to enjoy many other libraries from large public ones such as the New York Public Library to scholarly ones such as the Bodleian at Oxford University, the Blegen at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, and the research library at the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles. These libraries all have one thing in common: They are centers of information and they are changing with the times. They are staffed by knowledgeable individuals who provide assistance, not by the stern figures of my youth whose primary concern seemed to be to maintain a deathly silence in the room.
Janet Grossman
Spokane
GOP has hijacked Christianity
About 20 years ago, I was listening to a public radio station that aired a conversation between Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich. They didn’t realize that the microphone was still turned on and that they were being recorded. DeLay said the Christians were gullible and easily duped and that he had gotten five Christian radio stations to run their political ads for free. Gingrich laughed and said, “Just tell them we believe in what they believe and that God was on our side.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene is now saying that America should be a white Christian nationalist country. I think she means that Muslims, Buddhist, Jews and Hindus shouldn’t be in positions of power. Those positions of power should be reserved for white Christian nationalists. I also think that her goal is to keep people of color as second-class citizens with no political power.
If Jesus were here today, I think he would drive these white Christian nationalists out of the temple just like he did with the moneychangers. If some of these so-called Christians came to my door and asked me to join their church, I would respond with, “Why would I want to do that because you support racists and bigots like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene?”
Rick Johnson
Spokane