The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 8

beurlmgtonJFrec press EDITORIAL BOARD Brad Robertson, President and Publisher James M. Carey, Chairman Mike Townsend, Executive Editor AkiSoga, Editorial Page Editor Edward Bartholomew, Controller Opinion CONTACT US Mail: Burlington Free Press, P.O. Box 10, Burlington, Vt 05402 E-mail: lettersbfp.burlingtonfreepress.com Saturday, December 8, 2007 Editorial Page Editor Aki Soga 660-1873 or (800) 427-3124 Page 8A LETTERS TO tuc cniTriDfia ill i is i i i ti3 --m pause. Please do the research and if you are in any way concerned, do not hesitate to ask your doctor to develop a safer vaccination schedule for your child. It is a timely and reasonable request.

MELINOA MOULTON Huntington State needs governor for the 21st century We Vermonters are looking forward to 2008 in hope of change, change in Washington and change here at home. We need a governor who is positive about Vermont's future, who believes in innovation, can actually deliver on affordabil-ity, gives more than lip service to the environment and understands the needs of small businesses and farmers. Anthony Pollina is a farm advocate who has built a successful Vermont business from the ground up. He is positive and passionate about Vermont's future. He will lead the way in creating a green economy, bringing new, good paying jobs to Vermont for our children.

It is time for Democrats, Independents, Progressives and even some Republicans to come together behind a candidate who will lead Vermont into the 21st century, and I think the guy who can do it is Anthony Pollina. LAURA CARY South Burlington Too many questions on bundled vaccines So much of my research keeps turning up statistical and scientific data that correlate the increase in vaccinations with the rise of childhood autism, asthma, ADHD, and other neurological disorders. Most agree that immunizing our children is critically important. What some parents do not agree with is the safety with which vaccinations are being administered. Injecting several different types of vaccines called vaccine bundling during a single doctor's visit into the fragile bodies and minds of infants barely a month old is shocking.

In the 1970s and 1980s my children received about eight vaccines which were spread out over time, and not given until they were much older. Today our babies are receiving over 30 vaccines and most of these before they turn 2. There has been a tenfold increase in autism in the past 20 years and it has doubled since 2003. One out of every 150 children born in the U.S. today is on the autism spectrum.

It is now epidemic, and a whole generation is being affected. Until the medical profession can prove that bundling vaccines and injecting them into our infants is 100 percent safe, I encourage all parents to take Free Press file The little red schoolhouse on Vermont 2A In St. George. Clean up our historic landmark Make a nomination tion came to town. It still did not have any inside plumbing when I graduated in 1951.

Two outhouses were built on the south side of the building. No running water, we had to run and get it! A spring in the pasture out back of the school provided the water in warm weather, and in the winter we went to a nearby home for our day's supply of water. The schoolhouse was heated by a big wood stove. It burned slab wood that was kept in the woodshed built on the back of the building. We, the students, started the fire and kept it going all day.

It was let to go out at night, therefore, the school building was very cold in the morning. We also did the everyday housekeeping. At the end of each day we put everything back in order, cleaned the blackboards and swept the wood floor. I loved to sprinkle the green stuff (I can't remember what it was called) on the floor because it smelled so good! It was to MY InaM. TURN Isham other year we had 28 students.

The number of students varied a lot because of the farms that hired tenant farmers, who didn't stay very long. It didn't matter how many students we had, it was always just one teacher for all eight grades. The students were from age 5 to 15. We all got along fairly well and looked out for one another. Every morning we saluted the flag, said the Lord's Prayer, and sang a few songs accompanied by the teacher or a' student on the piano.

On real cold days someone played marching music and we marched around the room until we got warm enough to begin our lessons. Electric lights were put in around 1940 when the Rural Electrification Administra The Burlington Free Press editorial board is asking readers to nominate a Vermont resident who deserves to be recognized as the 2007 Vermonter of the Year. Think of someone who has made a difference this year or through a lifetime of work; someone who stepped up in a time of need or proved to be a leader; someone whose acts or accomplishments embodied the best of Vermont. The editorial board will consider reader suggestions along with nominations from the editorial board members in making its selection. Past Vermonters of the Year include real estate tycoon and philanthropist Tony Pomerleau, Peter Miller, photographer and chronicler of a disappearing Vermont, Vermont National Guard Adjutant General Martha Rainville, Middlebury College President John McCardell and Committee on Temporary Vermonter OF THE is A Shelter Director Rita Mark-ley.

Nominate one Vermonter, with a short explanation of why this person deserves recognition. Please include your name, address and telephone number for verification. The deadline for nominations is Tuesday. E-mail your nominations to lettersbfp.bur-lingtonfreepress.com with "Vermonter of the Year" in the subject line, or by mail to: Vermonter of the Year, Letters to the Editor, The Burlington Free Press, P.O. Box 10, Burlington, VT 05402.

We look forward to hearing from you. to rise above polarization I wonder how many folks drive past the little old schoolhouse on Vermont 2A in St. George without even noticing what a sad sight it has become; the red paint is peeling off, the yard is overgrown with weeds and brush; and a huge box elder tree threatens to fall over and crush the school-house. The interior is a mess, but could be cleaned up easily. This is a pre-Civil War building, built in 1854.

A one-room school for all eight grades. For over one hundred years many children passed through that doorway. Just think of all the stories that could be told! It was used for all town affairs, school parties, and church services and dances. The Ladies Home Dem meetings, card parties and bingo, and many other activities were held over the years. I attended this school for eight years.

I remember that one year we had only eight students and then an- No way I bow to no one in my distaste for food-fight politics. I don't want to dine with absolutists and ideologues hurling red meat at each other. For that matter, I have long amused myself with visions of baby boomers carrying the same old conflicts into old age, dividing into pro- and anti-Vietnam nursing homes. So I am drawn to the brand known as Generation Obama. This presidential candidate has repeatedly offered himself as the post-boomer, the one person in the race who can take us past the great divides of the past 40 years.

In announcing his candidacy, Obama used the word "generation" 13 times. In "The Audacity of Hope," he described boomer politics with something close to disdain as a psychodrama "rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago." On TV, he described Hillary Clinton and others as people who've "been fighting some of the same fights since the '60s." This post-boomer theme is spun out in Andrew Sullivan's recent piece in The Atlantic, where he writes that "if you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the boomer generation and face today's actual problems, Obama may be your man." It can be found as well in the label that Ross keep the dust down and also left a shine on the floors. After the school closed and sent the students out of town to school, I worked with the Head Start program held there in the 1960s. By then the schoolhouse had indoor plumbing, with flush toilets and sinks. An oil burner had been installed for heat.

Volunteers from the Hinesburg Fire Department painted the building red, with paint furnished by the Head Start program. Up to this time the school-house had always been white, getting a fresh coat of paint most every year. For historical reasons I think it should be restored to its original color of white. It is my hope that somebody somewhere will think the schoolhouse is worth saving for the historic value. It could be a nice little museum for Chittenden County.

This is a treasure we should not lose. Most of these old schools have been remodeled for homes. Ina M. Isham lives in Williston. ing her children: "I don't care who's right and who's wrong; just stop fighting." But of course I do care who's right, who's wrong, who'll win.

What if red America is pitted against blue America? Obama is a notoriously uneven performer. Alone on a stage, he is often eloquent and inspirational, if I may use an Oprah word. But on the debate platform with his opponents, he is, well, less impressive. Temperamentally he prefers to be above the fray. But the campaign against any Republican will take place in the fray.

Gitlin, author of "The Bulldozer and the Big Tent," says, "In a family situation, we need a healer." But in an era of ugly politics? "We don't need healing but resounding defeat. The bulldozer can't be kissed into submission." Maybe I am suffering from too little "audacity of hope." Or an excess of experience. The Democratic nominee won't have the luxury of a do-good campaign. Even a post-polarization candidate would face a polarized politics. There's still a difference between being an icon of change and an agent of change.

And there is a difference as well between being a fine philosopher king and a strong presidential challenger. Write to Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe, Boston, Mass. 02107 or e-mail ellengoodmanglobe.com. Chance for Chavez to act like statesman 7 I Ellen Goodman Baker, a Rutgers political scientist, put on Obama: "the post-polarization candidate." But slowly, all this generation talk has forced me to revisit not just boomer politics, but the nature of polarization in a country that may be poles apart. To begin with, if Obama represents the "post-polarization" generation, what was the "pre-polarization" generation? The idea of some tranquil 1950s America is surely exaggerated.

There were great struggles over McCarthyism and nuclear testing, to name just two issues. As for the consensus that existed in the 1950s? Columbia's Todd Gitlin says, "There was a consensus that nothing much ought to be done to yank the former Confederacy out of the age of Jim Crow. There was complacency about the position of women. Complacency about the belligerence with which the U.S. occasionally overthrew uncongenial foreign governments." Are we nostalgic for that? The '60s opened up huge and important conflicts.

It was not all about boxers or briefs, inhaling or not. Issues surfaced around black and white relationships, male and female relation ships, gay and straight relationships, all kinds of authority and our place in the world. These still go on. Not because they are relics of old college dorm fights but because they are still important and unresolved. Did Democrats go down in the last two presidential elections because they were locked in a stale old fight, or because they lost that fight? Now we come to the 2008 primary season.

Ba-rack Obama is an appealing icon of change. In reading "Dreams From My Father," I was engaged by a description of his half-sister's dilemma torn between the Western values of individual success and the African values of community. He has the capacity to turn a problem around, roaming across its many surfaces. He gets it. His philosophical frame of mind appeals to the educated elite of the Democratic Party.

His largest group of supporters is college-educated. But I am forced to ask, against my own grain, whether Democrats need a philosopher or a combatant. In his stump speech, Obama says, "I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights. I don't want to pit red America against blue America." Neither do I. Sometimes, I approach politics like a parent watch If nothing else, the rebuke Hugo Chavez suffered at the polls Sunday should at least cool his charge toward a socialist state.

The Venezuelan president sought sweeping constitutional changes that would have given him great power to muzzle dissent, seize private property and allow him to rule in perpetuity. Venezuelans smartly rejected the plan, by a slim margin, and the rest of the hemisphere can breathe easily at least for the moment. In the aftermath of the vote, Chavez has reached a political crossroad. He can seek other ways to run Another view roughshod over the opposition and continue dividing the country, or he can acknowledge his limits and compromise with an emboldened and far less fractured oppositioa Venezuela, and the hemisphere, would be better served if Chavez pretended less to be like Castro and more like a statesman. South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Fla..