Letters to the editor, Week of September 28, 2017

Small act of environmental kindness

To the editor:

My letter regarding roadside waste, published a couple of weeks ago, was not terribly uplifting. However, I’m writing this short note to add a positive postscript. This morning, Monday, September 25, I was on my bike for a bit of a ride and had just turned onto the Dirigo Road from Rte. 3. As I went up the slight rise, I noticed a lot of round white covers from sheet rock “mud” containers; I would guess they blew out of the back of a pick-up. I stopped and started to pick them up with the intent of piling them next to the road and retrieving them on my next trip to the transfer station. As I was working my way along, another pick-up went by and then backed up and stopped. The driver got out, picked up the covers I hadn’t reached and put those and my handful on the passenger side of his vehicle. We talked for couple of seconds, shook hands and off he went. He said he hadn’t realized what I was doing as he passed the first time, but returned when he did.

Long story short, this small act of environmental kindness is the perfect example of what we all should be willing to do to help save the world around us. I didn’t get the driver’s name but to the guy with the reddish hair and the blue pick-up, you’re a great representation of what we need. Keep it going!

Bob Bennett

Big oil will always control us

To the editor:

Something for you readers to digest and maybe recall President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower, when elected, uttered these famous words: “Beware the industrial/military complex.” Think he meant arms manufacturers as well as other nice people?

As per the authoritative Oil and Gas Journal (Oct. 13, 2011, Pg. 104), “Big oil will control some 82.8 percent of future Iraqi crude oil production: Exxon-Mobil 22.7 percent, British Petroleum (BP) 20.6 percent, LukeOil 20 percent and Shell 19.5 percent.

This to me is just another transfer of wealth from the Americans who shed their blood and paid treasure to open Iraq for exploitation by the West to the international super rich who, as we all know, run the world while the rest of us poor folks just go on plugging with our heads in the sand.

PS: Too bad Mr. Burns, in his documentary Vietnam, didn’t expose how many bombs were dropped there and what it cost, along with 58,000 poor GIs.

Frank Slason
Somerville