Providing our own food

To the editor:

Awaken! The oil age is over. Even though fuel prices have dropped since last summer, you know very well that they are going up again soon and will continue to rise and change the way we live dramatically. There’ll be less energy and less stuff.

Oil is becoming increasingly unavailable to us. Mexico, for instance, has been our third-largest supplier of oil in recent times. Now its biggest field is declining rapidly while its own needs soar and it will soon be unable to sell to us. The same story is being repeated with oil exporters all over the world.

In this changing environment, I am particularly concerned about having enough food to adequately feed all of us in Sullivan County. It is obvious to me that we need to go local in our food production so that we are resilient and have an adequate supply available a long-term sustainable basis. We can do it. We have lots of arable land to grow food, be it veggies, fruits, nuts or grains. We can form community gardens, school gardens for food and learning, institutional gardens and personal gardens and give our excess to local food banks and kitchens. We can do it. It is so satisfying to work with our earth and experience the marvel of seeds and seedlings growing into the plants that nourish and sustain our lives.

I have made myself available in the last year to anyone locally who wants to grow food. This is not to make a personal living. I am retired and it is a way to contribute to my community. Please contact me at 845/292-2279 or timshera@yahoo.com to help plan and implement a local system that lets us supply all our food in an earth friendly organic manner. I can’t do it alone. I need your help.

Real energy security

To the editor:

In a recent issue of The River Reporter, the editorial questioned the wisdom of allowing the transfer of gas leases to a foreign entity. I couldn’t agree with them more. All the public has heard for a long time from the Bush administration and the oil industry was how we need to open up more of this country’s dwindling wilderness areas or offshore acreage to drilling in order to wean ourselves from foreign energy sources.

As we all know, many of the governments that hold control over the world’s known oil and gas reserves are decidedly not friendly. I haven’t heard Venezuela or Russia or Iran or any African or Middle East countries singing our praises recently.

To allow the resources from a major energy source such as our natural gas reserves to be purchased by or sold to a foreign company cannot possibly improve our security or our wellbeing.

This country needs to put more resources into enhancing alternative energy systems. However, I realize that natural gas is going to play an important part in fulfilling the country’s energy needs for some time. If we must drill, we must insure that it is done as responsibly and safely as possible.

Let’s keep our resources and our profits in the United States. There ought to be a law.

Power in numbers

To the editor:

I am both angry and scared, after reading stories in local newspapers regarding the prospect of more flooding in the Upper Delaware Valley.

Harold Roeder Jr., the Town of Delaware’s representative on the Upper Delaware Council, spoke to members of the Town of Delaware board regarding the flood situation along the Delaware.

It is time for all the residents in the Upper Delaware corridor to join forces and fight New York City Board of Water Supply’s blatant indifference to our plight we here along the Delaware have long endured.

We have suffered more than any one entity should ever have to. Businesses have been ruined, homes and their contents (some irreplaceable) totally destroyed and lives disrupted. Three floods in 14 months is an abomination.

People up and down the river joined forces to fight NYRI, why not join forces and fight New York City? There is power in numbers.

We must put pressure on our congressional representatives at both the state and federal levels, as well.

Let’s get together and do something before it is too late, again!

A bottomless supply of appreciation

To the editor:

There could not be a better answer to the perfectly reasonable question, “Why sports at Delaware Valley?” that Mr. Splendora asks in his letter to the editor last week, than the “My View” column in the very same issue by your sports editor, Richard Ross.

Mr. Ross spelled out very well some of the benefits of participation in sport for young people. I believe that—but I also believe (as does Mr. Ross, no doubt) that these same benefits accrue to kids through playing in the band, teaming up to produce plays, school newspapers, science projects, etc., even if they never receive public appreciation on the same level of that given to athletes.

But Mr. Splendora’s views deserve note. He may be saying what many student non-athletes are feeling: “Doesn’t my participation and success count, too?” American culture is sports-centric; there is very little reason to deny that. But celebration of young people’s achievements is not a zero-sum game. There should be a bottomless supply of appreciation to go around to kids who are excelling (or trying to) in all phases of school and community life. Whether it is expressed monetarily, as Mr. Splendora suggests, or with the same kinds of “attaboys” that Mr. Ross cites in his column, young people grow with the help of recognition and direction from adults and peers. It takes a village—whether members of that village paint their faces and travel to the sectionals to cheer or simply stop a kid in the store and says “Hey, that spring concert was great. I saw you up there. Thanks.”

You can’t quite pay tuition with that currency, but it will enrich a kid.

Eat cake

To the editor:

So a friend of mine is in the gym the other day, on Long Island. She frequently engages in conversations with people at the gym, and that day was no exception. A somewhat older gentleman started telling her about his son at General Motors and how his job was safe. He said his son worked in the financing division at GM, and as a matter of fact, had just received a $600,000 bonus for his good work. “Don’t you think there’s something wrong with that picture, with all these people being laid off, and with the bailout?” my friend asked him. “Oh, no, I think he deserved it. He works very hard, traveling around, going to meetings...”

Think about it. The average pay of a GM assembly worker, according to a site I googled, is $64 an hour. Not bad. Higher figures suggested in places such as The New York Times, which incorporate benefits and include already retired workers’ pensions, have been strongly contested. Others have cited the salary at closer to $28 an hour. For argument’s sake, let’s say that comes out to somewhere between $60,000 to $133,000 a year?a decent salary. But that guy's son's one-time bonus is the equivalent of five to ten factory workers' annual salary. I don't know if the assembly workers really work any less hard than he does, but five to ten of them get laid off while he receives his bonus.

It makes me wonder if the "big guys" seeking bailouts want us to, maybe, eat cake? They certainly don't seem to "get it" any better than 18th-century French aristocrats, anyway.

Speak up for alternatives

To the editor:

Now that the Democrats control the House, Senate and Presidency, let’s pray that they do a better job than the Republicans did. OK, so let’s hope President Obama brings our troops home and helps the economy and environment; but we all don’t have to agree with every policy and agenda he pushes. Please, let your senators and congresspersons know you are against any form of abortion because a fetus is a defenseless not yet born person, not a choice, and that you want marriage protected as between a man and a woman and that you are against bullying by universities toward those of us who don’t buy into Darwinian evolution theory and tell them to support academic freedom. Lastly, let them know you are against the Fairness Doctrine, because radio has traditionally removed the spin placed on the issues by newspapers and television.

I respect our new president and he had an excellent and very religious inauguration. Many Christians voted for him. But now is the time to speak up against these issues that he believes he is supposed to pursue.

Please go to the American Center for Law and Justice website and sign the various petitions that are listed under Take Action: A C L J.org Also check out Hischannel.com as an alternative to television.

Thank you.