Letters to the Editor (4/24/24) 

'Earth-Shadowing Moment'

[Re "Totally Transfixed," April 10]: At 3:26 p.m. on April 8, 2024, in northern Vermont, it was our moon, the Rolling Stone in the sky, that heard: "I wanna see the sun / blotted out from the sky / I wanna see it painted, painted, painted / Painted black, yeah." The irksome hype leading up was eclipsed only by the event itself. Truly an earth-shadowing moment!

Jeremy W. Bond

Winooski

'Shameful' Price Gouging

[Re "Totally Transfixed," April 10]: It was honestly very disappointing to observe how many hotels, etc. jacked up prices for their services, just to make money during the eclipse. Nice way to welcome needed visitors. Shameful? I think so!

Michael King

Orwell

Saunders Is a Joke

Is this a joke ["Top of the Class? Gov. Scott's Pick for Education Secretary, Zoie Saunders, Faces Questions About Her Qualifications," April 10]? Having a master's degree in education; several years teaching American history, economics and American government; and serving in later years on the school board in Weathersfield, Vt., I am horrified that Gov. Phil Scott, who admitted not even discussing charter schools with the candidate — who has no other school experience!? — wants an anti-public-schools fool in this role!

Do we hire nonswimmers as lifeguards around here, too, non-smart Scott? Unbelievable! This must be stopped, reversed, immediately! Or my kids, our kids, our schools are jeopardized. By a very stupid governor!

Bob Stevens

Weathersfield

A Different Ed Secretary

Alison Novak has done thorough research on Gov. Phil Scott's choice for education secretary, but I wish she had included other applicants who could and should replace Zoie Saunders ["Top of the Class? Gov. Scott's Pick for Education Secretary, Zoie Saunders, Faces Questions About Her Qualifications," April 10]. One I know of is Elijah Hawkes, former principal at Randolph Union High School. He has written several books about his experience as a Vermont educator: School for the Age of Upheaval: Classrooms That Get Personal, Get Political, and Get to Work (2020) and Woke Is Not Enough: School Reform for Leaders With Justice in Mind (2022).

It's clear, just by the titles of his books, that Hawkes knows our Vermont students. He has their best interests in mind and would make a great education secretary. Let's petition that he replace Saunders.

Robin Lloyd

Burlington

Saunders Is What We Need

[Re "Top of the Class? Gov. Scott's Pick for Education Secretary, Zoie Saunders, Faces Questions About Her Qualifications," April 10]: The week of April 15, as in years past, the University of Vermont Philosophy Department very generously offered the community Public Philosophy Week — 43 presentations and discussions. Many thanks to them.

Philosophy examines thinking: how to think, not what to think. Given thepolitical groupthink that is tearing our communities apart, it is critical that we examine our lack of thinking and how destructive it has become.

I attended the "Purpose, Power and Promise of Public Education" talk — apanel of three dedicated teachers, facilitated by Alison Novak, Seven Days'education reporter, a mother and former teacher.

Education has a deeply ingrained, lopsided liberal bias. Something like 75 to 80 percent of teachers come out of liberal colleges, making it almost impossible for non-liberals to have faith in the system. I can attest that some professors honor the how — others, not so much.

The talk was baffling: While teachers complain that they don't have time to do all that is expected of them, they seemingly are not focused on the basics: reading, writing and math. We heard about teaching boys how to be men, tackling homelessness, public safety, inviting like-minded visitors in,and checking in with students' feelings and identity.

Stats show that Vermont's DEI-obsessed liberal education system is failing our children. We need out-of-the-box thinkers. While some liberal legislators complain that Gov. Phil Scott's pick to head the education department hasn't been a teacher or climbed that ladder, she sounds exactly like what our education system and students need.

Marianne Ward

Burlington

Editor's note: Novak convened the panel. She had profiled two of the featured panelists recently in Seven Days; the third is Vermont's 2024 Teacher of the Year.

Pandemic Reflections

[Re From the Publisher: "2020 Hindsight," March 13]: I appreciated Paula Routly's pandemic recollections. Mine include losing a 15-year career, four months into "15 days to slow the spread." The shutdowns, which mostly ignored the World Health Organization's pandemic guidance, wrought massive and lasting collateral damage.

We plunged ahead, following "the science." But the six-foot rule wasn't that scientific after all; it "sort of just appeared," Dr. Anthony Fauci said recently. Some masks worked; most didn't. Novel, gene-based vaccines warped to the rescue with lofty forecasts of herd immunity — "even if it's a variant," said Vermont's health commissioner. Those hopes evaporated, as did the "pandemic of the unvaccinated."

Early on, frontline physicians trying to reduce the carnage by innovating early treatments were coldly dismissed and deplatformed. More recently, the lab leak "conspiracy theory" ripened when former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Robert Redfield's congressional testimony asserted exactly that origin scenario. Dr. Fauci downplays this, of course, notwithstanding his widely reported funding of viral gain-of-function research in Wuhan. No worries?

Government restrictions, especially abroad, courted totalitarianism. China's zero-COVID policy confined Shanghai residents indoors for months. Australia arrested citizens for not showing vaccination papers or masking outdoors; positive cases and international travelers had to isolate, not at home, but at government-run quarantine camps. Not a good look.

COVID-19 was a fog of war for local/state public servants, who did their best with what they knew. I'm less confident with federal government, Big Pharma and the disturbing militarization of public health. The same people assure us another pandemic is coming. What will we have learned when it does?

Jeff Euber

Essex Junction

'Limbo Ethics'

[Re "Ethics Panel Dismisses Complaint Against Ram Hinsdale," April 11, online]: Reading the recent allegations of ethical impropriety directed at Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, of the Hinsdale Properties clan, I thought about singer Chubby Checker.

In the 1960s, Chubby popularized a Caribbean dance called the limbo. Participants faced a horizontal bar and then slowly bent backwards, cautiously inching forward, chest up, until they could pass under the bar without touching it. Those who succeeded competed in the next round, whereby the bar was progressively lowered closer to the ground, on and on until only one winner remained.

Chubby's song "Limbo Rock" became a hit. It had a great beat, a fantastic rhythm and a memorable chorus: "Limbo lower now, limbo lower now. How low can you go?"

And now, given the Senate Ethics Committee's pooh-poohing the charges against Ram Hinsdale, it's fair to ask: How low can Vermont Democrats go with their patented brand of Limbo Ethics, normalizing scandal and driving rules of acceptable conduct into the ground?

To succeed at the Limbo Rock takes great balance and strong quads. To get away with Limbo Ethics, all it takes is chutzpah, something Sen. Ram Hinsdale and her Democrat colleagues seem to have an excess of. In a one-party state, with a legislative supermajority and a monoculture of ideological thought, they may keep "winning," but the more the Dems win at their cynical game, the more the people of Vermont lose. And we, in the end, will pay the price.

Bruce S. Post

Essex Town

Senator Is Conflicted

Kevin McCallum missed the mark with his story describing the conflict-of-interest complaint against Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale signed by a number of Vermonters [Re "Ethics Panel Dismisses Complaint Against Ram Hinsdale," April 11, online].

It's common knowledge in the halls of Montpelier that the senator is the chair of a committee promoting legislation that allows for wealthy landlords like the Hinsdale family to more easily carve up homes that should be available for single families and turn them into smaller rental units, mostly for students in the Burlington area.

That is a clear conflict of interest, as any veteran senator with courage would confirm. Few senators would say the complaint was "completely baseless." In the past, those who confronted the senator have been chastised as sexist or racist. In political circles, those labels produce fear and buy silence.

The truth is, the senator's husband manages over 165 properties for his mother, Irene Hinsdale. The senator is family. How could the senator say that her work on housing "is neutral or negatively impacts my husband's family's business"? It is neither. Using the "cover" of affordable apartments, more core density and less sprawl does not excuse excessive profits and fewer homes for families.

If the Hinsdales managed some homeless shelters, created more Section 8 housing or created affordable housing, their reputation would be different. But that's not how to build a $50 million empire.

The Senate Ethics Committee failed to investigate because senators will be very reluctant to turn on one of their colleagues. Senator Ram Hinsdale should have recused herself from the Housing Committee. Vermonters deserve better.

John Bossange

South Burlington

Bossange filed the complaint against Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale with the State Ethics Commission.

What About Air Pollution?

The tail of the "All About Emma" letter [Feedback, March 27] was right on. Yes, those F-35s drive me nuts, too, but thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who managed to divert their path where I live in Winooski, it's not so bad now.

But that's noise pollution. What about the air pollution generated by the tons of wood chips burned in South Burlington to produce electricity?

Tom MacDonald

Winooski

Tiny Type

Ditto the letter to the editor requesting a larger font for your crossword clues [Feedback, "Larger Type, Please," March 20]! This is an accessibility issue for Vermont's increasingly aging population!

Otherwise, really appreciate your wonderful reporting.

Joan Bowker

South Burlington