Dog’s Life—or Death
In a town populated by people as supposedly progressive and well educated as Northampton’s, I’m daily shocked to see the treatment meted out to Northampton’s dogs! Tied to parking meters on Main Street, unattended, in the sun, with no water, or in the pouring rain! Literally bleeding from a wounded paw, while the oh-so-hip owner enjoys his Starbucks capuccino! Left in cars in front of Big Y, panting and barking for aid! The conduct of these dog owners towards humans is no less shocking. I’ve reproached a few, and been rewarded with aggression bordering on illegality, racist, sexist and other insults, and threats. I don’t even bother anymore; I just take names, license plates and photos, and send them to the Northampton animal control officer. Her name is Nancy Graham (413-527-2100). If you see a dog being abused or neglected, call her. That doesn’t make you a busybody, it makes you a friend of animals.
Most people know you can’t leave a dog in a car on a hot day. But you can’t do it when the skies are overcast, either! The car overheats even if the sun is obscured. Cracking the windows is not enough, and opening them “enough” puts your dog at risk to be stolen, and then victimized and abused in countless ways. Likewise tying your dog to a parking meter on the sidewalk—do you think the dog is comfortable? Happy? Safe? Certainly not.
Your dog is a living, sentient being. He or she is not a fashion accessory; he or she does not exist to serve your pleasure. The dog cannot speak, so I am speaking up for the dog.
Kathy S. Grey
Easthampton
Where Should We Get Our Energy?
It’s truly quite pathetic that our federal and state governments don’t get the fact that biomass power plants are almost 70 percent less efficient than dirty coal-fired power plants, while polluting almost 50 percent more. A recently published study by the state of Massachusetts [the Manomet Study] has confirmed that biomass releases more toxic greenhouse gases and unhealthy particulates than coal.
Poisonous, spewing biomass power plants have been shown to cause cancer, asthma, heart disease and other respiratory ailments. The Massachusetts Medical Society published a recent report stating that it is unequivocally opposed to these toxic-spewing plants. We will also be banking our future on an unhealthy dependence on a source of energy which detracts from a 100 percent renewable energy revolution, our only truly viable option for a green future.
Lastly, we don’t want our healthy trees and forests eviscerated to fill the greedy coffers of the wealthy industrialists, which is precisely what will happen the second they can’t meet their predetermined quotas with wood chips, corn stalks and leftover construction debris. Each tree cut represents a triple loss to us and our environment.
Truly We the People are responsible to protect, heal, and enhance our forests—and that’s why we need your critical help now. Please go to www.stopspewingcarbon.com. Real participatory democracy is a big pain in the ass, but here’s the nasty alternative: our kids will be crying: “Mom, Dad, what were you thinking? You’ve poisoned the air we breathe for all time!”
Douglas E. Wight
via email
The letters in your June 17 issue about the horrors of the Gulf oil spill and other environmental damage from traditional energy industries raise an interesting question. If one opposes offshore oil drilling, nuclear power plants, mountaintop coal mining and some newer sources of energy such as wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, biomass plants in Western Massachusetts, and even large-scale solar farms within view of their neighbors (although the idea of wind and solar in Massachusetts rather than in Oklahoma and Arizona makes such little sense to begin with)—and if one lives in a modern dwelling where plastic switches turn on the lights, the computer, the flat-screen TV, the heat and air conditioning and myriad electrical appliances, all of which permit one to learn about energy and the environment and to communicate about the problems with others in comfort—in what parallel universe does one solve this equation?
Many of these arguments about our energy future bring to mind the rhetoric of Gulf states governors who would reserve all the benefits of offshore oil drilling to their constituents and pass along all of the costs to the rest of us. Get real or get off the grid.
Paul Cherulnik
Leeds
“Butcher of the Quabbin”
Recently, Leverett Police Chief Gary Billings found a “Wanted” poster tacked to the bulletin board of the Leverett Village Cooperative store. [The poster] is now in the hands of the state police. The poster targets Herm Eck, chief forester of the Quabbin and Ware River watersheds. I find it frighteningly similar to the scare tactics used by extreme pro-life activists prior to their acts of violence. The poster proclaims, “Wanted! For ecological crimes against the Quabbin watershed and environment.” Eck is referred to as a “Tree Nazi aka The Butcher of the Quabbin.”
Using forest management practices established for maximizing volume while maintaining quality, the Quabbin Reservoir and watershed has been superbly managed for over 50 years. In fact, the water quality is so pure the Commonwealth was given a waiver and does not need to install a filtration plant originally mandated by the federal government—saving the Commonwealth billions of tax dollars. Yet these eco-terrorists believe that their view of what is best for the Quabbin is somehow superior. They need to get a life and stop their bullying of those who should be rewarded for their work, not condemned.
Genevieve Fraser
Orange
Pregnant in Prison
It is important for your readers to know that, unlike New York, New Mexico, Vermont, Illinois and Texas, Massachusetts has no law banning the shackling of women prisoners who are in labor (See “Mothers Behind Bars,” June 24, 2010.) A Massachusetts Department of Correction policy allows the routine use of shackles on pregnant women, although during the second and third trimester women prisoners are to be handcuffed only. According to DOC policy, full restraints are to be used when returning a woman to jail or prison after birth. Waist shackles cannot be used. Despite the DOC directive, the experience of many women in Massachusetts is that they are shackled unless a medical practitioner attending the birth directly intervenes. Routinely, women are shackled to the bed by one foot within two hours after giving birth. For this to begin to change, H1490, An Act Relative to Pregnant and Postpartum Inmates, introduced by Rep. Kay Khan, needs to pass. Massachusetts would then have a law explicitly prohibiting shackling of women traveling to or from a hospital and shackling during delivery. Attention can be given to the woman’s and the newborn’s health and the burden would no longer fall on the doctor or nurse midwife, who now must convince a guard that a woman in labor poses no security or flight risk.
Lois Ahrens
Real Cost of Prisons Project
Northampton
