Letters to the Editor (2/8/23)

Church ‘Claptrap’

[Re “Burlington Allows Parish to Demolish Historic Cathedral,” January 11, online]: In response to the idea that one possible repurposing of the cathedral building — in lieu of demolishing an architecturally and culturally important piece of Burlington’s history — could be its use as a theater, this was Monsignor Peter Routhier’s response:

“The plays that could be put on, the things that would be said would be so abhorrent to Catholic faith and tradition that it would be appalling. You just cannot have sordid events taking place where the celebration of the Eucharist was so central to that community.”

What sanctimonious claptrap! For generations, Catholic clergy abused little boys and girls in so-called sacred spaces where the Eucharist was routinely celebrated, the sort of sordid and abhorrent behavior that has gotten the Catholic hierarchy into the fix they now find themselves, forced to close up community parish churches across the nation and sell off properties to keep litigants in multimillion-dollar lawsuits at bay. They have made business decisions — pure and simple — very much like those decisions Sears and Krispy Kreme made in shutting down underperforming franchises during their various fiscal crises.

Yet now Monsignor Routhier seems, genuinely or not, shocked at the idea of The Vagina Monologues — or, God forbid, Cats — being performed in a former cathedral converted to a playhouse. He has no shame, and that the whole room didn’t erupt into laughter when he did his best U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) impersonation and let this out is amazing to us. Perhaps irony is indeed no longer a thing.

Robert S. Devino & Pauline J. Kehoe

Burlington

Problematic Pesticides

[Re “Lawmakers Approve New Pesticide Rules for Vermont,” January 19]: While a few changes have been made to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s requirements, the regulations do little to protect human health, other species or water quality. There is no mention of the relationship of pesticides to climate chaos, no provision for citizen appeal of pesticide permits, no language calling for pesticide reduction (part of Vermont statute since 1970 but repealed in 2021).

The regulations make no mention of pesticide contamination by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, or “forever toxins”), either by leaching from containers or by deliberate addition as unidentified ingredients by manufacturers to enhance efficacy of the pesticide. Only principal ingredients of a pesticide are identified on the label. The other ingredients may also be toxic but are considered by law to be “confidential business information.” Such laws protect chemical corporations but unjustly endanger us all.

Enter U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Senate Bill S.3283, Protect America’s Children From Toxic Pesticides Act. Now in the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, that bill requires identification of all ingredients in a pesticide product.

U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) now sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee. Please urge him to cosponsor and support this bill: 202-224-4242 or 800-642-3193.

Sylvia Knight

Burlington

Knight is a member of the VT Pesticide and Poison Action Network.

Mulligan, Please

[Re “Amid a Housing Crises, Some Eye Golf Courses for Development,” January 25]: I am absolutely appalled that a state representative would be so cold as to put the desire for protecting golf courses over the needs of the state’s unhoused population. This is not what Vermont residents are about.

According to the Vermont Biz website, between 2012 and 2022, the homeless population increased from 1,160 to 2,780. This does not include offenders who have served their incarceration sentence minimums and are being held in prison for lack of housing.

Rep. Woodman Page (R-Newport) is blind to the needs of the state and its residents. Saving golf courses as green spaces for people to enjoy while walking past the homeless camped out there because they don’t have a roof over their head or any other place to go is not a proper use of the land.

I will concede that we do need to save some areas as green spaces, and maybe a compromise can be made to provide both green spaces and housing in the same locations. This would be fantastic, and it’s possible. Don’t approve H.15, which is now in committee in Montpelier and would only deter helping the unhoused and reformed offenders waiting for a place to call home.

Scott A. Lowe

Winooski

Despair Over Disrepair

[Re “From the Publisher: ‘Wellness’ Check: Burlington,” January 18]: I feel sad about the state of the YMCA building, too.

Like a small number at the Y, I belonged to the group of folks who did not want to get a new building or, previous to that, move to the lakefront.

I worked in the reception area of the Y doing a variety of jobs for more than 20 years, including the laundry and seeking out the baskets for members, for which I do remember the extreme enthusiasm!

Even without any of the nostalgia attached to having spent time at the Y, I feel it should be of concern to those of us in town that it is an eyesore and that neglected buildings can become an attractive nuisance to vandals and a cause for possible accidents. It brings a sad pause to see the place now.

Susan Jenal

Burlington

Blame Us

In his December 28 cartoon, Tim Newcomb invokes biospheric collapse and proceeds to blame human population for the trauma our Earth is experiencing. I groaned when I read this, because it blames the victim.

Biospheric collapse is the result of poisons (CO2) being pumped into the atmosphere, mining, fossil carbon operations, logging, and the continued expansion of farm and orchard lands, destroying or replacing complex ecosystems with simple ones, and collapsing biodiversity. The stuff of which our stuff is made, and the energy by which it is made, is taken from these collapsing ecosystems to bring comfort to only the richest one-eighth of the world’s population.

But resting one-half of all consumption on one-eighth of the world’s population isn’t a population problem. It’s a consumption problem. Supposing that the economy must grow, supposing we can heap waste and abuse on nature without consequence, and supposing that nature is just a bundle of resources is the problem.

The biosphere is collapsing because we are destroying it on the altar of prosperity. The crowded masses now clamoring for first-world living standards didn’t create these problems.

Colonizers and imperialists from Europe, spreading across the globe in pursuit of wealth, and, today, “development” professionals preaching neoliberal dogma created the problem. Political leaders and our media preaching the gospel of growth and consumption, and our hunger for wealth, perpetuate the problem.

So we are to blame. Not population. Us. Consumers. Voters who won’t let their leaders lead us to low-consumption lives.

Stephen Marshall

Burlington

Attitude Adjustment

[Re Feedback: “Second-Home Opinion,” December 28]: In response to Robert Perry’s concerns that those poor, destitute second-home owners are being terribly put upon by paying for “Vermont education yet do not send their children to Vermont schools,” I say boo-hoo. Vermonters could afford to educate their kids if people like second-home owners, land speculators and their ilk didn’t parlay their wealth into an extra layer to their nest egg, making the people who live and work here scramble to pay inflated rents, property taxes and other general costs of living.

Nothing makes my heart ache more than seeing my fellow residents who have lived here for generations be led to think they have to kiss the feet of those “who drive the local economy” — i.e., some ungrateful SOBs who think they pay too much in taxes yet “get little in return.” Pity’s sake. Vermonters pay those same taxes when they eat out, visit stores and shops, and — God forbid! — ski those same slopes and tour the autumn splendor (if they can afford it). Vermonters literally drive the economy here most of the year.

I think Perry needs to think rethink his precious Mad River Valley attitude and remember the plight of those who fix the roads, sell the booze, wait the tables and drive the ski buses.

Christopher Maloney

Washington

Milk Money

Kevin McCallum’s article on dairy pricing [“Milk Check: Some Lawmakers Say Vermont Should Consider a Milk-Price Premium to Help Struggling Dairy Farmers,” January 18] is well written save for one crucial thing. McCallum explains that government-forced over-order pricing for milk would likely make Vermont’s value-added dairy products industry less competitive in national and world markets. But he has an enormous blind spot about the central question: Who is going to get hit with the higher prices?

If the state forced handlers to pay higher milk prices to farmers, the handlers would pass that price increase along to the retailers, who would mark it up to their customers.

This is another example of a popular but deplorable legislative game: Find a sneaky way for the government to benefit favored groups — in this case, all farmers, well-to-do and struggling alike — and send the bill on to consumers, who can’t figure out why they are paying more for dairy products.

This is the same deplorable game as the shamefully named Affordable Heat Act, which plays the same trick on families and businesses that heat with fuel oil, propane or natural gas, with the proceeds going to subsidize heat pumps and electric cars favored by the unaccountable Public Utility Commission.

I can remember when liberals objected to schemes to secretly transfer money from consumers to favored special interests. Where are they now?

John McClaughry

Kirby

Drug ‘Doublespeak’

In the January 11 Seven Days, echoes of George Orwell’s 1984 were intentionally or obliviously obvious in [“An Ounce of Prevention? Vermont Is Debating How to Leverage Its Opioid-Settlement Windfall to Address Spiraling Drug Problems“]. Within was an avalanche of ominous concerns on the opioid plague in Burlington. Valid, burgeoning and deadly. This article dribbled on to page 17, prognosticating “cautious optimism” of strategies to come to assuage the assault.

Enter Orwell and his visionary term “doublespeak.” For, on the very next page, after hundreds of words warning of drug inflation, an article titled “Weed Wish List” ponders the odd options of and bizarre benefits of more potent pot flowers and assorted “Far out, man!” gummy goodies.

This is doublespeak nonsense in newsprint. Consecutive concepts that pander to the open-minded but portend confusion that perpetuates tragedy.

In honesty, not all who toke up end up opioid addicts, but those who deal with the dazed and slow-dying will attest to a silent historical truth: Before most opioid users ever nodded out, they loved the buzz of a bowl of weed.

So what? Who cares? Orwell might nod in resigned discouragement were he to read the camouflaged confusion in these blurred messages.

If Seven Days is going to pontificate in doublespeak, maybe an editor could at least put a few pages between the babel. “Don’t do these drugs … just do these.”

Rick Pacukonas

South Burlington

Hydrotherapy for All

As a fledgling host of a small Airbnb with an aim to make hydrotherapy accessible to our guests and, ideally, our community, we were psyched to see it featured on the front page of the Wellness Issue [January 18]! We were inspired by our rejuvenating visits to spas in the friendly territories to our north [“Steam Scene: Montréal’s Hydrothermal Spas Dole Out Hot and Humid Relaxation“]. I’d tried everything else in search of pain relief, and it’s made a world of difference for me.

That said, I think the article missed a huge opportunity to bring to light the normalcy and acceptance of different bodies and self-care that is inherent in the practice and so sadly lacking in our culture. For me, the photos amplified the sense of elitism that made my experience of the article doubly disappointing.

I appreciate the shout-out to communal hydrotherapy. I just wish the article took the angle that people of every shape, color and ability could have access to a communal wellspring of wellness if we invested in the infrastructure, took care of the natural ones we’re already blessed with and changed our relationship with ourselves. An inch of kindness and care can go a mile.

With respect and gratitude for all the work you do, Seven Days!

Jennifer Wasiura

Weybridge

Balint’s Bad Business

In your flattering profile of U.S. Rep. Becca Balint’s (D-Vt.) first days in office [“Ms. Balint Goes to Washington,” January 25], there is but one passing reference to “more than $26,000 in campaign contributions from disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried.” An earlier headline proclaimed that Balint was donating a $2,900 SBF contribution to charity because “it just doesn’t feel right.”

I am flabbergasted that the Vermont media readily and repeatedly reports on these relatively minor miscues while totally squelching any reference to the $1.1 million contribution from SBF associate Nishad Singh that fueled Balint’s victory. We now know that a criminal enterprise was the true source of the money, laundered through the LGBTQ Victory Fund Federal PAC. When Balint’s opponent cried foul over this PAC support, Balint’s campaign manager accused her of homophobia.

Early reporting last June clearly established that the Balint campaign, using the “red box” ploy, helped engineer the windfall. This was never revisited in the media when the barrage of mailings and TV ads began in July and the Balint campaign was insisting that it was all out of its control. I often hear it said that Balint would have won anyway, but if the true source and circumstances of her PAC support were understood before the August primary, it certainly could have swayed 12 percent of the electorate.

Meanwhile, Rep. Balint has been appointed to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and pledges to “not let democracy fail in my lifetime.” Ugh.

William Nowlan

Moretown