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Open Forum Please keep the BHS French program
I would like to express my appreciation for the French teacher, Ms. Aulie, at Brainerd High School. My daughter is a first-year french student as a freshman this year. She has so enjoyed Ms. Aulie as a teacher and has learned a great deal about the french language and culture in just one year. We were so very disappointed to hear that the French program had been cut and Ms. Aulie's position eliminated. I am saddened, as I know others must be, that my daughter will not be able to continue her education in french at BHS. I would petition the school board to please consider the French program and find a way that it could remain a part of the BHS curriculum.
Sheila Moen
Baxter
Library is a good hangout
Some Vox Pop contributors have complained about teens hanging out near the library and being noisy, as teens will naturally be. In my visits there, I've never been bothered.
It may actually be better to encourage more of them to hang out there, possibly letting them put up an open awning. They seem to enjoy it, and they definitely need an informal place they can hang out that doesn't cost them any money. It's near the school, and they have a chance to run into their friends. It's in public, out in the open, and someone seriously intending trouble sure wouldn't pick this place. And when their parents ask where are you going, they can honestly say, "to the library"!
The area they congregate is open to the east and south, with the library acting as a wind break from the west and north. (Almost ideal, according to "A Pattern Language", by Alexander, Ishikawa, etc.)
Once in a while, something may get vandalized, or one of them might be rude. But once in a while us older people damage things, too (like Iraq, or our entire environment!), and are mean-tempered and crabby.
In Target recently, I saw two teen boys that looked just like the library crowd, walking past the checkout counters, heading toward the snack bar. Someone had left a pop cooler door open. As the fellows walked past the cooler, without breaking stride or interrupting conversation, they reached out and closed the door.
To me, this showed they cared, and would do the right thing and a little good deed, even when they didn't think anyone noticed.
It gave me a good feeling about our young people. Try as I might, I haven't been able to picture George Bush or Dick Cheney doing the same.
A. Martin
Merrifield
Remember Ward at gas pump
The next time you fill up at the gas station, be sure to remember state Rep. John Ward. He added insult to injury this session by voting to raise the gas tax by a total of 8.5 cents per gallon when it's all said and done.
Now I know for sure that money does not grow on trees, and I have to wonder where working families are supposed to come up with the extra cash every time they have to fill the tank up.
We legislators were warned this spring that the price of gas would go up. That being the case, it makes Representative Ward's vote to raise the gas tax all the more curious, if not careless.
I hope folks will remember John Ward every time they buy gas.
Rep. Mark Buesgens
R-Jordan
District 35B
Genetics knowledge is growing
In the recent letter "Abortion changes a woman" the writer cherry-picked a very frightening statistic from the study by Dr. Janet Daling, here are her conclusions.
Conclusion: Our data support the hypothesis that an induced abortion can adversely influence a woman's subsequent risk of breast cancer. However, the results across all epidemiologic studies of this premise are inconsistent - both overall and within specific subgroups. The risk of breast cancer should be re-examined in future studies of women who have had legal abortion available to them throughout the majority
of their reproductive years, with particular attention to the potential influence of induced abortion early in life. [J NatI Cancer Inst 86:1584-1592, 1994].
This study was presented in 1994. Our knowledge of genetics is growing by leaps and bounds each day. Almost every day new genes are identified that contribute to and cause an increased risk of cancer. There is value in looking at older studies, but that should be tempered with more recent knowledge and discoveries. Picking a statistic that suggests that if you get an abortion you will get cancer is nothing more than trying to use science to push a moral agenda, and frighten people rather than informing and helping them make a reasoned decision.
What a soul-wrenching decision it would have to be to deal with an unexpected pregnancy and the difficult decisions that would lie ahead. My only thought would be, may God provide help and comfort in their time of need.
Steve Lanz
Nisswa
No fan of Fox News
While it wouldn't be a bad idea for Obama to return the campaign funding he has received from sub-prime lenders, perhaps, McCain and Hillary should too ("Subprime Politics" WSJ, March 28, 2008), something apparently not mentioned by Fox News.
Fox is entertaining if nothing else. I remember a couple of years ago their running the caption 'National Disaster' under a shot of the current White House resident. More recently they ran the caption 'John McCain D-AZ' under a picture of the presumptive republican nominee. It's not hard to understand why people refer to the entity as 'Faux News... Fairly Unbalanced.'
David Butcher
Pequot Lakes
Two sides to the trail story
I couldn't help but notice the front page Dispatch story April 20, 2008, "Happy Trails".
Mr. McGaughey's "project of a lifetime" was the Paul Bunyan Trail.
What is not made clear is that hundreds of families had right of eminent domain to the abandoned railroad and that right was taken from us, consequently also the loss of our lands with no compensation. Mr. McGaughey said, "The Paul Bunyan Trail was just another product," but to us it was our property. He even suggests the trail adds health benefits - not to us though, we now have snowmobile exhaust in our front yards.
I'm sure Mr. McGaughey is a nice man, but there are two sides to this story.
Gloria Papillon
Pine River
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