Letters to the Editor 2017-09-28

PESTICIDE REFORM

It’s fine for writers like Mark Robinowitz to express their opinions, but opinions should never be presented as facts.

In his “Ban Aerial Spray” letter to the editor (Sept. 14), Mark claims that Beyond Toxics doesn’t endorse a ban on aerial spray, which is not true. I wrote a blog earlier in September announcing the Beyond Toxics board of directors formally voted to endorse the Lane County ballot initiative to ban aerial spray introduced by the Freedom From Aerial Herbicides Alliance.

Over the years, I’ve also written numerous media articles, newsletters and blogs discussing the demonstrable need to protect public health and safety by banning aerial herbicide sprays. Beyond Toxics published the first scientific analysis of herbicide use in forestry in 2013, which still provides a factual basis for opposition to ultra-hazardous use of herbicides.

There is great public benefit in Beyond Toxics’ persistent work at the state legislature to introduce pesticide reform bills and educate state leaders and state agencies about the incontrovertible truth: Aerial herbicide spraying poisons entire ecosystems and harms Oregon’s rural residents, drinking water and fish streams.

Lisa Arkin, Beyond Toxics executive director, Eugene

KEN, BARBIE & URANUS

With regard to the “Dickless Dolls” letter (Sept. 14), I sure don’t want to get in-between the “Barbie & Ken” spat. When one considers, though, how far (trans)gender issues have come since Mattel “conceived” those plastic binaries, it’s a moot point 50 years later, as they can be considered fully inter-changeable and “realized” eunuchs.

Flipping to the next page after Letters, I laughed at the irony when my eyes were confronted by a real-life, cosmetically air-brushed “Barbie” selling that corporate “Mile High Feeling” to Eugene…with “Passion!”

But wait! There’s Victor Wooten on page 18, hilariously objectifying himself with a, er, firm grip on the “dick” of his bass? The base of his dick, maybe? His left hand tense with the insinuated anticipation of a two-hander … uh, sorry Victor. What’s he (and EW) trying to “sell”: Music? Sex? His seemingly erect “instrument?”

In closing, a re-butt-al from “Uranus” to “Earth” man Dan Moore: It may be “50-50” in this isolated case, “doll”-face, yet you forget (?) an important FACT: Many men in Vietnam probably were “virgin,” yet so were, and still are, women over the millennia, virgin or not, who have been raped, maimed (physically and psychologically) and/or killed in the planetary War of Rape. Whether during ALL wars, or in peacetime.

As the song goes, “We’re in this love together,” and the song remains the same.

Sean S. Doyle, Corvallis

NO CRUEL FOOD

We are a nation of special observances. There is even a World Day for Farm Animals, observed Oct. 2 (Gandhi’s birthday). Apparently it’s intended to memorialize the tens of billions of animals abused and
killed for food.

Like most others, I always thought of farm animals as “food on the hoof.” But when a friend sent me an amazing, endearing Facebook video, it dawned on me that farm animals are much like our family dog, fully
deserving of our compassion and respect.

My internet search showed that they get neither. Male baby chicks are routinely suffocated in plastic garbage bags or ground up alive. Laying hens are crowded into small wire cages that tear out their feathers. Breeding sows are kept pregnant in tiny metal crates. Dairy cows have their babies snatched away immediately upon birth, so we can drink their milk.

It was enough to drive someone to drink. Instead, it drove me to replace the animal products in my diet with a rich variety of plant-based meats and dairy items offered by my grocery store. I have since learned that a cruelty-free diet is also great for my health and for the health of our planet.

Edward Newland, Eugene

CHICKEN LITTLE

P45 is playing chicken. He’s playing against the rest of the world with our country and our lives. He’s a little boy nutcase, playing king of the mountain.

Congress needs to take the bag off of their heads.

You bet I’m angry!!

Marilyn Marcus, Eugene

OILY TRUMP

The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president is having real, catastrophic effects in the world.

There is a large body of water, Teshekpuk Lake, on the North Slope in Alaska, in an area which is designated as the “National Petroleum Reserve- Alaska” (it was designated in the 1920s as a petroleum reserve but has been managed as “multiple-use,” allowing for resource extraction and protection of wildlife habitat).

In 2013, the Obama administration announced a management plan that protected Teshekpuk Lake and three million acres of habitat surrounding it. This was done to protect an area that is recognized as one of the most ecologically important wetlands in the entire Arctic. Tens of thousands of migratory birds, including endangered species, and the Teshekpuk caribou herd depend on the habitat.

The Trump Administration has called for a review of the 2013 management plan. At a time when effects of climate change are daily disaster headlines, Trump seeks to rescind the Obama Administration’s protection of vital habitat, in the interest of facilitating drilling for oil.

Stephen Amy, Eugene