Put public back in public schools

To the editors,

When parents, teachers, students and other community members feel their issues cannot be fairly addressed by the District 9-R Board of Education there is cause for concern.A board of education is elected to transform the community's desires into district policies.The administrative staff has the obligation to implement and enforce these guidelines.The board therefore has the publicduty to give the citizens controlling voice over the administration.To accomplish this, the board needs to quickly change governing style.

We have been educators for over 62 combined years.We always sought community and parental involvement.We were always personally involved withand supportive ofour children's schools. It is time for the 9-R Board to remember citizens are at the top of the educational chain of command.

- Larry and Merrillie Hock,
Durango

Public locked out from comment

To the editors

I have just returned from a meeting scheduled forMarch 28, 2005, from the hours of 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Cortez Middle School, as announced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in its press release of March 4, 2005. The meeting was touted as a "public comment" meeting regarding the proposed coal-fired power plant planned to be built on NavajoNationland south of Farmington. I arrived just after 6 p.m. I was not greeted. There was not a posted agenda. There was a sign-up sheet. There were approximately eight display boards regarding the proposed plant put together by Sithe Global Power. A man was making a presentation to what looked to be 30 people, some of them were Sithe

employees. He responded to polite questions from the audience. This did not look like the "public comment" period to me, so I went out and grabbed a bite to eat, wanting to be fortified to give my public comment. When I returned at just after 7 p.m. the place was locked up tight. There is something definitely wrong here, and I can put my finger on it. Can you?

- Will Walsh,
Hesperus

Will God's chosen please stand up?

Dear Editors,Recently, I read yet another letter to the editor from yet another "self-made man."Nestled in a neo-Republican Christian undercurrent, he espoused the rightness of his avarice while demonizing all forms of social contracts within our American society, i.e. Social Security, Medicaid, etc.

Do these boastful who proclaim that they have pulled themselves up by their own boot straps not realize the impossibility of that feat in the real world? Does the proud, self-made person not appreciate that his successes and failures are intimately interwoven with the community of people, place and time one exists in?

The rich and mighty person along with the poor and impotent person are all just sparks of experience along the pageant of God's Creation. To live by the creed: "he who dies with the most toy$ wins" seems pitiful in the grand scheme of our flowing human generations and God's unknowable master plan. Whatever happened to giving of oneself for the benefit of future generations and the healthy stewardship of our magnificent planet?If God is God, then God permeates all of us and everything!Trying to portray oneself as God's elite, "the chosen," set above all the rest of humanity, is a notion only the human mind could conjure up.This assertion is reinforced by the tendency of the powerful to use their one-way-only religions as a bludgeon for battering others. It runs contrary to alldeeper reflection upon the nature of faith and our place in God's creation.

During our past century, it seemed as though, just maybe, humanity learned some key lessons that would help our transition from a boundless Earth to our new world reality of limits.Tragically, with the ascent of the Bush Neocons, along with their contorted take on Christian values, it's as though we're placing ourselves right back into the same self-destructive predicament as countless other failed empires. Unfortunately, unlike backthen, there is no place left to escape to.

How sad.As a friend liked saying: "Buy 'em books and buy 'em books, and allthey do is eat the covers."

- Sincerely, Peter Miesler
Durango

The price of living the lifestyle

Editors,Every now and then I pick up your paper and read it.I find it very ironic that the very people who complain about "progress" and the coming of the new Starbucks as such an insult are the very people who have ruined Durango to begin with. Do they really think Starbucks would have moved into this area had not the population grown to such an extent to support it? People have been getting off that train for years, and I seriously doubt that a Starbucks could survive a winter season unless there were enough people here year round to buy their coffee.I have lived here for 25 years, and I have watched Durango go from a really sweet little college/ski town to this "destination vacation" nightmare.Driving through Durango is an exercise in frustration, no matter what time of year it is. Everybody wants to live the lifestyle. What these newcomers don't get, is that the increase in population destroys the very thing that made this such a great place to begin with. What can I do about it? Nothing but move, which we are.

- Lynn Moore,
Durango

Not someone to bring home to mother, unless you're CEO of ExxonMobil

To the editors,

Woman of easy virtue. Wanton. Tart. Jaded. Couch it any way you like, it still means "whore," according to Merriam Webster, "a venal or unscrupulous person."

Gale Norton heads the U.S. Department of the Interior, better known by the usual governmental flair as "DOI." With eight bureaus, it is this nation's primary conservation wing of government, with a mission to protect America's treasures for future generations. This includes land and water resources, and fish and wildlife.

How is our Lady of the Hour faring? Is she embracing this mission or rollicking in the hay with oil and gas barons, mining execs and sundry hunks from the multi-billion-dollar recreation industry, especially those, who go hun-hun with their snowmobile accelerators?

Miss Norton's past might be an indicator of performance in office. She was lead attorney for the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the notorious Wise Use, anti-environmental, so-called nonprofit law firm, which works tirelessly to weaken environmental and public safety laws. She founded the Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, funded entirely by the Coors' Heritage Foundation, the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the National Mining Association. Clearly a front - you know, like a Madam's fine household - for darker doings. Not great credentials, nor friends, for being this nation's lead protector of natural treasures.

Maybe I shouldn't be hasty. People change, right?

Since in office, Miss Norton has been caught with her pants down as DOI scientific research was systematically doctored in documents related to both endangered species and the effects of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Her department fiddled with stats regarding the unquestionably negative impacts of noisy, exhaust-spewing snowmobiles on wildlife and national park staff in Yellowstone, where she recently flaunted her wares for photo-ops, stating that riding astride a bucking snowmobile was so much more fun than sitting inside a more environmentally sensitive snow coach. (We go to a national treasures like Yellowstone to go hun-hun, don't we?)

Of course, we know who appointed the special Ms. Norton and who his cronies are. And by now, we must surely realize how the majority party in Congress is simply pimping for the same houses of interests that these characters work for, their track record hardly revealing representation of public interests. So, perhaps it's time for a really productive, truly democratic constitutional amendment,a national initiative:Appointees to leading posts in agencies as powerful as DOI will be chosen by advice and consent not of the Senate, but by those individuals working within agencies, who have truly dedicated their professional lives to their agencies' missions.

- Nancy Jacques,
Durango

Starbucks not all bad

Dear Editors,

With all the nonsense going on in the country these days, I was surprised to find The Telegraph picking a fight with Starbucks (Thumbin' It, March 24). While I agree with the principle that locally owned operations are in general better for the local economy than national chains, Starbucks is hardly the archetypical corporate robber-baron.

Consider that Starbucks is one of the few companies in the relatively low-wage service industry to provide health insurance to all employees who work more than 20 hours per week. Their CEO reports that they

Spend more on health care than on coffee (Business Week, Nov. 22, 2004). In a town that cannot attract primary-care providers because nobody has commercial health insurance, would such an employer not be welcome? I would be interested to know the benefit packages of the otherwise saintly local coffeehouses; however I highly doubt their health coverage is as generous, if it exists at all.

Furthermore, according to its web site, Starbucks makes benefits available to domestic partners. With all the religion-inspired

Hate spewing around, this is a rather enlightened position.

I am hardly a Starbucks apologist and doubt I'll ever visit the new store. There are local coffee shops I have supported in the past and will continue to support. I simply point out that the presence of Starbucks is not necessarily "bad," and that other companies might do well to follow some of Starbucks' practices.

- Jon Rudolf,
Farmington