Letters 11/16/06

Turkey torture
As Thanksgiving approaches, I
invite everyone to visit Sasha Farm Animal Sanctuary to meet Gandalf and our other amiable turkeys. You’ll see that they are beautiful, intelligent, inquisitive, docile animals who adore beingpetted. They will always have a loving home here at
the sanctuary.
But millions of other turkeys are not so lucky. Before they reach your holiday table, they are packed in dark, smelly, feces-filled sheds. Farmers sear off a portion of the birds’ beaks so they can’t peck other birds and damage their flesh out of stress or boredom. No anesthetics are used during this agonizing “procedure.” At the slaughterhouse, they are hung upside down and sent through a stunning tank which paralyzes them, but doesn’t render them unconscious. They can still feel pain when their throats are slit, and they are often scalded alive in the boiling-hot water used for feather removal.
If this isn’t something you wish to support, than switch to a vegetarian diet.
For more information, or to make an appointment to visit the animals at Sasha, please see www.sashafarm.org.

Dorothy Davies, Director
Sasha Farm Animal Sanctuary,
Manchester, MI

Source of the stink
What is causing all these problems in Williamsburg? (re: “Feisty Women Raise a Stink,” 11/2)
“The sweet cherries go into a brine pit...which leaches out the cherries’ color, sugar, and flavor. The little yellow balls are then...soaked in a vat of water...and then they’re soaked again in red dye, sugar, and flavoring.”
What’s wrong with cherries in their natural state? What is the reason for
using resources to produce such an artificial product? Maybe the reason this mess has occurred is because people are bigtime messing with Mother Nature! No, I don’t think Jerry Garcia would be pleased.

Su Green • Honor

Offer a lifeline
A few years ago I read Doug Stanton’s book “In Harms Way.” I love to read but usually I read fiction and escape into the fantasy of a creative writer’s mind. For some reason this book intrigued me. When I read Doug’s book I realized that I had found a gem—an excellently written and researched novel that I could not put down.
Doug had made the struggles of these men so real and so terrifying that I could feel the cold water seeping into my bones and the men’s screams echo in my soul.
His article in the Northern Express about the two men who died really moved me and it was obvious that he respected them for their bravery and for living their lives so courageously (“Veterans Day memories of Bob & Lou,” 11/9). It also reminded me that all of us should be so lucky as to offer a lifeline to someone, somewhere, sometime—even if we don’t know it.

Mary Taylor • TC


Hope for our country
I want to express my admiration and respect to the gal who wrote about being a repentent Republican. Your letter moved me very much. So much so I forwarded it on to friends and family in California. They too were very moved.
You gave us hope (“us” being assorted progressives, both non-partisan and Democrats), for our country getting out of the mess we’re currently in. I for one have been feeling quite hopeless. In addition I have siblings who will never walk away from Rush Limbaugh and the neocons currently running our country.
You are a brave lady to submit a public apology. I’ve never seen anyone else courageous enough to do the same. I wish more Republicans felt as you do.

Karen Martin • Cheboygan

NASCAR candidates
With all of the talk about campaign reform and the public‘s general discomfort with the enormous amount of money needed for a candidate to be elected, would it not be a good idea for those politicians running for office to follow the practice of our race car drivers?
How about requiring candidates to wear big patches with the names of their corporate sponsors clearly visible and identifiable so the public can intelligently evaluate just who will have access and the inside track when it comes to a vote?
We should be seriously concerned about our legislators‘ votes being controlled by special interests with deep pockets. WE need to know whose interests our legislators are, or will be serving... the ones whose names are on the big patches, or the constituents back home.
As the saying goes, “Follow the campaign money trail.”

Ellen Addinton • Ellsworth

Tired of bad ads
Isn’t there supposed to be truth in advertising in the media as on TV and radio? I for one am tired of the election mudslinging.
The job of the governor is to run the state, not find replacement jobs, unlike the federal government, which controls commerce, and allows big greedy business to throw away and/or send overseas to increase its profit margin.
Has the media lost its moral obligation to monitor and stop what it shows and tells the public which may be only partially true because of the revenue that is being generated by all parties? I feel strongly that “We the People” are being shortchanged once more and demand that it stops now. Then again, media is big business, so why should we expect more than we are getting!

James C. Williams • Kalkaska

Threats to Constitution
“A republic, if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin reportedly said in reply to a question whether there was to be an American monarchy or a republic.
He, and others, gave our fledging country a set of fundamental laws and
principles to guide and protect it: the
constitution.
Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying, “The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.” Complete freedom, or security, cannot be guaranteed to us. There is an inherent tension between the two, like it or not.
While keeping the above in mind; there are other words to heed, such as, at a minimum, the first 200 pages of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” There, we learn the German Assembly, in 1919, passed a very liberal and democratic constitution. Yet, with the citizenry’s complicity, its words became worthless. We have done better through constant vigilance.
In 1933, after the burning of a government building, Hitler used the event to prevail on Germany’s president to sign a decree that suspended seven constitutional sections guaranteeing individual and civil liberties (“for the protection of the people and the state”). He saw that the decree
ordered:
“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”
By 1934, Adolf Hitler was emboldened to address thousands (after the imprisonment and murder of even longtime supporters): “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people and thereby I became supreme judge of the German people.”
We, and our representatives, must decide how far from our Constitutional guarantees we choose to stray, in search of
security.

Lois F. Golightly • TC

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