Letters to the Editor (10/9/24)

‘Rich Histories’

[Re “Tightly Woven: Friends and Neighbors Turn Out to Help Marshfield School of Weaving Move to a New Home,” September 25; “A Baker’s 100: Marshfield’s Jules Rabin Celebrates a Century of Intellectual Curiosity, Trailblazing Bread and Standing Up for Peace,” August 7]: Within the last month, Seven Days has transported me back to 1994, when I first arrived in Vermont. I stumbled upon the Marshfield School of Weaving and, while studying with founder Norman Kennedy, discovered Goddard College and enrolled there. Jules Rabin had everyone in Plainfield and beyond waiting on Wednesdays, when his “Rabin’s Bread” came out.

Your pieces on these central Vermont cultural icons capture the era and sentiments of the time and preserve rich histories that make this state such a gem. Thank you for honoring Vermont institutions like these in this supercool, modern newspaper.

Lorilee Schoenbeck

Essex Junction

Time to Refocus

[Re “Reel Drama: As Vermont Movie Theaters Respond to a Changing Industry, Burlington May Lose Its Only Cinema,” August 21]: I don’t think it takes a professional filmmaker, which I was for more than 25 years, to notice poor projection in a movie theater. Specifically, I’ve been annoyed by the too-large images projected in two of the smaller auditoriums at Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas in Burlington.

What I mean is that the top and bottom, left and right of the picture are cut off. In technical terms, the projection lens is too long. If you don’t mind — or notice — that tops of heads are cut off or important information is missing off the left or right of the screen, then the Roxy is likely acceptable to you.

Discerning moviegoers, especially those who are less into mainstream action and more into artful drama flicks that should be viewed the way the director and cinematographer intended, will not go to the Roxy to see a film.

I’ve tried and have had too many bad experiences, including fruitless visits to the lobby to report sound that was at too low or high a level, or a picture whose framing was off. Until some technology, expertise, thought — and investment? — goes into solving these problems, I for one will not be returning to the Roxy.

The Main Street Landing Film House and intimate VTIFF Screening Room project films the way they should be seen, so those are now my go-to Burlington movie houses.

And by the way, wouldn’t it be nice to see the Flynn show some of those spectacular wide-screen Technicolor and CinemaScope films from the ’50s and ’60s once in a while?

Greg Epler Wood

Burlington

Epler Wood is secretary on the VTIFF board of directors.

Drug Business 101

In [Feedback: “Fix the Drug Problem,” September 25], Robert Vacca argues that a strong, paternal ass-whooping would solve society’s current drug crisis. I argue that “three strikes” — along with its kin, “broken windows” — merely shuffles the undercurrent of the drug crisis to an out-of-sight/out-of-mind mindset.

A century ago, prohibition, speakeasies and machine guns were the stories of the day. Today, opioids, crack houses, semiautomatics and street-corner turf wars dominate the news. Unfortunately, the invisible hand that guides the free market functions as well for the black market as it does for the legal market.

Where there is demand, a seller will supply it. If penalties are severe for 100 doses, the supplier only carries and/or sells 99 doses. If one supplier goes out of business, another supplier fills the void. Jail allows for the first- and second-time offenders to learn from veteran three-time offenders how to become better criminals.

Rather than jail time for the low-level drug pushers, my modest proposal is chain gangs, tar and feathering, and public square stocks. Public shaming at its best; social media goes wild! Ratings are up!

As an end note, opioid deaths are now almost equal to alcohol deaths per year, while tobacco deaths outdo both combined categories by a 2.5 to 1 margin.

Stephen A. Jarvis

Swanton

‘Harsh’ Truth

[Re Feedback: “Bad News Burlington,” September 4]: Mental illness and its concomitant symptoms of addiction, despair, criminal behavior and homelessness cannot, in the final analysis, be effectively addressed by treatment protocols: medications, therapies, shelters, affordable housing or indeed any of the “remedies” that are currently available.

That sentence is harsh, but its truth is undeniable when we regard the statistical evidence that shows their high rates of recidivism and outright failure. Indeed, the “bad news” has become endemic.

I speak from my own track record of dismal experience. Unwilling to take my life, I chose the seeming, though false, solace of addictive substances. It has been pure grace that eventually I found my way out of the morass, the “slough of despond.”

The tragedy of modern life is that the rewards capitalist society offers turn out to be hollow, false and without real value, and the people on the streets of Burlington evidence that fact. Only a wholesale reordering of our civilization’s properties proffers a ray of hope.

Peter Burmeister

Plainfield

Middle-Class Lament

[Re “Canaries in a Hospital: Some UVM Medical Center Workers Say They Can’t Afford Its Health Insurance Coverage,” August 21]: Unfortunately, health insurance is increasing for everyone or being eliminated completely. Hospital costs are skyrocketing as hospitals are asked to treat more and more unvetted and unvaccinated noncitizens … 10 million known. How many millions of unknowns?

It is a daily reminder of how fragile our society, our economy and our way of life have become in the past three and a half years. More and more will be asked of American taxpayers until there’s no more middle class. It’s called socialism. Vote like your children’s and grandchildren’s futures depend on it.

Joanne Varricchione

South Burlington