Local Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

    Plant-based meals are becoming more and more accepted as reasonable and healthy. Well planned vegetarian diets are healthful and may help prevent and/or treat certain diseases, according to the latest American Dietetic Association position paper. Vegetarians have lower rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, colon and prostate cancer, and obesity. They also have less risk for dying from heart disease and lower cholesterol.

    You can learn more about vegetarian nutrition while cooking some tasty vegetarian meals. I and three other instructors will be taking turns leading a vegetarian/vegan cooking course, to meet every Thursday evening, 6-8, from 28 Feb. through 11 April at the SeDoMoCha School in Dover.

    The class will be a fusion of nutrition with the art of cooking, and each class will end with the joy of eating our meal together! Discussion will cover concerns about, as well as the health benefits of, a vegetarian or vegan diet.

    To enroll, call the Piscataquis Valley Adult Education Cooperative at 564-6525.

Bob Lodato
Charleston

To the Editor:

    The Jan. 25 Quoddy Tides newspaper quoted Darryl Brown, Cianbro’s East West Corridor project manager as saying, “People are leaving the northern part of the state in droves … We believe this will be an economic booster for all of Maine’s economy.”

    If the people are leaving in droves, wouldn’t the northern part of Maine be empty by now? If the so-called Hollow Middle is leaving in droves, why would we need an east-west highway? Without industry in place whom would this corridor serve? Creation of an east-west highway cannot bring jobs if there are no potential employees. It might serve a few, but not to the extent that would maintain a sustainable profitability, allowing it to follow in the wake of the similar private highways in the United States.

    Once they are educated, those people that leave do so because they see no jobs commensurate with their skills, and not wanting to destroy the land that they cherish, leave to find jobs elsewhere. They leave in order to allow their homeland to be preserved, refusing to be part of its demise.

    Maine’s median age goes up, not only because the young leave for better jobs, but also because people love “Maine, the way life should be” and either come here or return here to retire. As long as we keep our forests working — not exhausted — provided for with respect and serviced by nature, its wildlife, water and other resources, we stand the best chance on this earth today to sustain our existence. These lives may be deemed meager, but they will be healthier from less stress and remain one of the highest standards left in the U.S. today.

    So are Brown and his colleagues saying that we the people should be kept uneducated, poor, and in need of menial labor jobs offered at their whim, and removed if we rise up for a better standard of living? They promise that we could stay in our homeland if we permit the destruction of our forests, our farms, our homes, our water, our air (and none of them would have to endure the aftermath of that destruction) with their clean bottled water from Maine, their wood products from our forests until they are depleted, and their already crappy air. What type of promise is that to Maine’s people and its nature? This promise would deny us the very standard of living and quality of life that they say their plans could provide!

    This force-fed “progress” may boost the corporate perception of our economy and that of our government, however, would it boost our concept of ourselves? Would this destruction for corporate and government benefit boost the world’s perception of Maine and her people? And what would that perception be once Maine becomes an unsustainable wasteland, after corporations leave due to lack of resources or more expensive labor (which would increase our standard of living)?

    It comes time, once again for Maine people to stand up, give deep thought about our existence and that of our families and their futures, placing them, community, nature, and future first. Not placing self first as we are but guests of nature. It is now our decision (like my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s) as to how to hand off that which we have had the ability to enjoy and in what condition this inheritance will be.

    This letter was edited by Heidi Brugger.

Eric A. Tuttle
Guilford