Rutland Daily Herald from Rutland, Vermont • 18

18 RUTLAND pAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY MORNING JUNE 28 1971 Letters to The Editor The Herald welcomes letters from readers on el I timely sublects Writers must include names and addrasses Please make letters asshort as possible None will be printd without signature Rutland Daily Herald FROM ARTICLE XVIII OF THE VERMONT BILL OF RIGHTS (Adopted July 1777) Ttwt frequent recurrence to fundamental principle! and a firm adherence to justice moderation tern-Pr" industry and frugality are absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep govern- ITWf? Tf69 Wednesday June 28 1972 Reappraisal Benefits Prior to Rutlands reappraisal of taxable property completed this year the principal type of inequity in appraisals seemed to be between new or recently purchased property and property that had remained in the same ownership for many years Judging from the complaints of some property owners following reappraisal the same inequity persists although perhaps it may have been modified to a degree Aside from this factor perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the reappraisal project was the relatively small increase in the size of the grand list that resulted A general reappraisal of property had been under consideration in Rutland for many years An appraisal by outside professionals had been repeatedly suggested but there was never enough support for it to win a combination of public and aldermanic approval In the end City Hall settled for a review of property values by the regularly elected members of the Board of Assessors This is the way it was done many years ago in 1946 to be exact when the assessors did a similar though less extensive job which resulted in an increase of approximately 50 per cent in the size of the grand list At that time the list moved up to $212448 from $142175 Although no final figure has been arrived at this time around it is expected the grand list will increase from $521400 to approximately $650000 as a result of reappraisal action which is a considerably smaller gain in percentage than that of 1946 If the amount of increase is disappointing in the light of the huge gain in property values since 1946 a comparison with the 1946 grand list may be reassuring reflecting intermediate adjustments in appraisals in recent years These adjustments of course have been prompted mainly by sales of property or building additions to existing structures Another major benefit of the reappraisal and the expenditure of extra funds to make it possible is the accumulation of a set of files regarding Rutland property which is presumably much more detailed and informative than anything previously available at City Hall The assessors now have a base to work on which will make future reappraisals easier and less expensive 1972 by United Feature Syndicate Inc FROM THE ROCKBOUND COAST OF MAINE TO THE SUN-KISSED SHORES OF CALIFORNIA and you're still undecided11 Your Moneys Worth McGovern Economic Policies III Belgo Valley My academic specialization is Latin American history and anthropology not Vermont history but as vicemoderator of the Castleton Town Planning Commission I felt concerned over the towns responsibility to insure the protection of the vestiges of this important road As I inquire deeper into its history certain misconceptions that I and others shared about it have been dispelled Prior to 1776 the main road north from Castleton followed present- day Frisbie Hill Road and then East Hubbardton Road But after the fall of Fort Ticonderoga to Ethan Allen and his men in 1775 a much larger fort (Mount Independence) was constructed on Champlains west shore In September of 1776 General Horatio Gates ordered the construction of the Hubbardton Military Road to insure a more direct route from the newly-built bridge at Rutland Falls for the speedier transport of military supplies It was vital to find short cuts that would save time The late Joseph Wheelers excellent book The Mount Independence-Hubbardton 1776 Military Road (Benson 1968) documents persuasively the route up Belgo Valley through Belgo Gap and down to the familiar flagpole north of Route 4 just short of West Rutland The Ticonderoga and Crown Point cannons sledded to Boston in midwinter of 1775-76 did not figure in the Battle of Bunker Hill but were important in laying siege to the British Despite Clay Perrys account of their being transported via Fort George and Albany (American Heritage April 1955 12) Mr Wheeler (p 100) cites evidence that some of these cannons passed through Castleton and East Poultney (but not the Belgo section of the Hubbardton Military Road not yet built) Surviving traces of the road through Belgo Valley show that it sought gradual inclines and avoided swamps but was remarkably direct The route through Belgo Gap was too much of a climb however to be 1 very practical Although Wheeler tells of thousands of soldiers using it shortly after its construction it was never very transitable and in peacetime was replaced by routes that followed the bottom lands and are still in use today History is a fluid thing There is much more of it than later generations can ever perceive We are fortunate if across the years some of it can be recorded and made more accurate The professional historian is unusually sensitive to the obligation to refine and eliminate mistaken impressions based on incomplete reading of the evidence It is with this conviction that I hasten to correct my former assumptions about the route in question As the second centenary of the American Revolution approaches the historic routes vestiges in Belgo Valley deserve preservation The roads significance to the Battle of Hubbardton is undiminished by removal of the erroneous details to which this letter is directed WARREN LCOOK PhD (Professor of History Anthropology Castleton State College) Better Than Nothing If Sen George McGovern were to become President of the US and if he were then able to put into effect programs he has seriously proposed what might it mean to YOU? You as a jobless average American worker or an unemployed scientist or engineer? Answer: Far more sympathetic treatment and much greater direct and indirect financial assistance than you have received under the Nixon Administration I must underline the three fundamental points once again: The South Dakota Senator is toning down his For the Jobless By SYLVIA PORTER planning law enforcement methods drug rehabilitation As a third he would insist on sharply increased spending for support of research with purely commercial applications especially in the case of smaller firms As a fourth he would stress an active search for ways to stimulate and encourage smaller technical enterprise in contrast to todays pattern under which the bulk of Federal research and development funds goes to the biggest corporations And as a final illustration of this direct attack on unemployment among the highly skilled McGovern One provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 which was pushed through Congress only after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Sen Robert Kennedy prohibits the import of short-barreled handguns This provision has been widely circumvented by firms that import parts of the guns for assembly in this country Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill sponsored by Seri Birch Bayh D-Ind that would plug the loophole by outlawing the sale of small concealable handguns not suitable for sporting purposes This time it took the near-fatal shooting of Gov George Wallace to get the more than year-old bill dusted off and out for committee action The vote was 12-2 with Chairman James Eastland D-Miss and Sen John McClellan D-Ark dissenting Although the bill would hardly be a leap ahead toward adequate gun controls it would be better than nothing in a country where gun deaths now total 20000 a year Bayh estimates 26 million handguns are sold in the nation each year and that his bill would account for about one million of them Americans from the President on down should ponder some of the information coming out of hearings on gun control legislation this week MINUTEMAN DISPLAY The City of Rutland is soon to be host to one of the most horrible and destructive products that man has ever made We are soon to receive for display in the Rutland Shopping Plaza a land based Minuteman III ICBM nuclear missile Such a weapon of death can deliver from one to ten 400 kiloton hydrogen bombs One kiloton alone is equal to the explosive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT Such a war head is 20 times as powerful as the first atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and has enough explosive power to vaporize an area of fifty square miles This weapon is being brought here through the joint sponsorship of the Chamber of Commerce and the US Air Force I recognize the right of both the Chamber and the Air Force to make the decision to plan for the missile to come to Rutland However as an individual and a resident of the City I am deeply concerned over the fate of mankind and the increasing rise of violence both at home and abroad Further I consider the missile a symbol of the wasteful use of our tax dollars and I am opposed to the bringing of the missile to Rutland My reasons are: a) the missile is an offensive weapon and has no constructive value whatsoever Its only purpose for being built was to ultimately destroy life and property b) with the invention of nuclear weapons war is now obsolete as a means of settling international disputes Each superpower now holds enough nuclear weapons to independently blow up the entire world 10 times over c) the very display of the missile which is a mammoth symbol of violence can only lead to the glorification of the use of violence which is counter to the efforts to achieve a just and peaceful world community It is my hope that other citizens of the Rutland community will consider what this missile stands for and give thought to the question what purpose will the missile serve by being displayed in the Plaza? THOMAS WYLIE Rutland GIS HELP NATIVES I am sick and tired of your one sided reporting of the Vietnam war I have yet to see where you ever spoke a good word for one of your own countrymen Bob Pierce who founded World Vision told of an American serviceman who had some medical knowledge He set up a clinic in the jungle Bob Pierce visited him late in the week He was caring for people who had no other help Bob Pierce went back on Monday The medical soldier was dead killed by the Viet Cong Just why did the Viet Cong kill medical missionaries who were working for the poor lepers? They killed all who were there and destroyed the hospital Surely neither the lepers nor the missionaries were fighting the Viet Cong Why were they murdered? You often speak with great sympathy for the suffering of the people of North Vietnam I suppose the people didnt suffer in the Highlands of South Vietnam when torpedoes were hurled into their villages It must have been very pleasant to the poor people to have torpedoes hurled at them and their homes destroyed I had an appeal from World Vision to help in surgical work for their orphans Three boys had each lost an eye in the infamous Tet offensive I have a friend who has worked for the mountain people of Vietnam for years She worked for lepers She said the Viet Cong would sneak into villages and carry off some of her leper patients Picking on lepers seems pretty low down to me BLANCHE BACHELDER Ludlow HUBBARDTON ROAD To rectify the historical record I would like to modify my remarks as quoted in the Rutland Herald June 22 about the significance of the Hubbardton Military Road astride which a 19-unit development is proposed in Castletons beautiful growing very rapidly and very soon we may be able to enhance or diminish specific behavioral qualities "Who then he asked is going to decide and direct the mental shaping of future man and what will be the basis for his decisions? Looking back the problems of medical ethics in the past seem relatively simple A doctor did what he could for the sick and protected the dignity of his profession But what rules does he follow today to decide whether to take a spare organ from a healthy person and give it to an ailing one? Or to decide whether to administer a life-saving procedure to a severely deformed newborn infant? The numerous agencies mostly private but including some governmental which have been created recently to deal with such questions are far from ready with the answers But a beginning is being made Among established agencies which have established new units to explore the moral issues in biological science are the National Institutes of Health the Academy of Sciences the American Medical Association the Salk Institute in California the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Kennedy of The Medical Ethics By HELEN SHAFFER (Editorial Research Reports) Strength Through Chess radical economics he is fully aware that no matter what he proposes Congress will pass his programs only if it considers them reasonable and sound he knows he himself will be an historic catastrophe if the economy and the stock market go into a tailspin because of fear of what he might do Against this background consider what he proposes for you the jobless An immediate Federal investment of a whopping $10 billion in programs aimed at creating 2400000 new jobs for average workers High on McGoverns list would be jobs in building of new and rehabilitated housing in creating public transportation systems in building neighborhood health centers and day-care centers schools and hospitals in programs for environmental protection Private industry would be given contracts for these programs just the way private industry is now given contracts for military production Simultaneously stepped up emphasis on public service employment should you still not be able to get a job and should you need to turn to the US government as the employer of last resort If you couldnt get a job in private industry in short you could find a paying job in public services The most direct attack in our history on the problems of the highly skilled unemployed scientists and engineers abruptly and brutally thrown out of work by military and aerospace cutbacks For this McGovern flays Nixon calling it a national failure to plan for the transition from a war to a peace economy" As one illustration McGovern would request immediate passage of Sen Edward Kennedys bill (S 32) calling for a $275 million job transition program to subsidize the trial employment of scientists and engineers including provisions for training in technical and managerial fields A program of that kind he says would cost little more than unemployment compensation and would produce many times the benefit to the professional the company and the economy As a second illustration he would demand vastly expanded spending for real research across a broad range of civilian needs that would absorb large numbers of skilled scientists and engineers Among the research projects would be studies on water pollution control improvement of health waste recycling energy conservation air traffic control noise abatement mass transit system population The Small Society Sen Edward Kennedy outlined a convincing connection between easy access to firearms and death by gunfire Japan has about 20 gun deaths a year with a population of 102 million England with a population of just under 50 million had 29 gun homicides in 1970 Both countries have strong gun controls By contrast Kennedy said in the United States about 10000 persons are murdered by guns another 3000 commit suicide by gun and 7000 are accidentally killed by guns each year The inference seems obvious Rep John Murphy D-NY introduced a note of irony in his testimony He cited RG Industries of Miami Fla as one of the firms producing the so-called Saturday night specials that are the target of Sen Bayhs bill He said it is run by a president vice president and secretary treasurer who live in West Germany The handgun they are selling in this country is outlawed in West Germany Do these other countries know something we dont know? Its a safe guess that when any further legislation to control guns reaches the floor there will be a renewed outcry from the gun lobby The signs will go up saying guns dont kill people do Do they mean guns dont kill Americans do? Perhaps it isn't surprising that some athletes turn to chess to sharpen their wits Two examples are Ron Johnson and Bob Tucker of the New York Giants professional football team who have been playing a marathon chess match for several years There is a lesson in all this that may be painful for people who dont like to exercise whether it be in sports or just walking instead of riding: Exercise is good for the health And for those with sedentary occupations like chess players exercise is essential for keeping the brain cells in good working condition In a Nutshell The Democratic National Committee headquarters being the last place anyone would expect to find a jot of cash no one has even thought of money as a possible motive for the burglary there last weekend But on June someone broke in and got $100 cash and some checks It was probably money the committee had raised to pay interest on the 1970 phone bill An ad for Robert Craft's newly published book about Stravinsky blurbs as follows: There are so many brilliant and moving things in it says the NY Times one hardly knows where to begin praising it Craft has an article in the latest New York Review of Books (that is) blurbed on the cover as freedom from The New York Times which has quite the opposite of praise for Timesmanship Biting the hand would create a Cabinet-level Dept of Science Technology to consolidate all Federal research and development programs to work with other Federal agencies the states cities and private industry to take charge of all research efforts including those of the Defense Dept and the National Aeronautics Si Space Administration (NASA) The simple-minded promise of the Nixon administration says McGovern is that the private sector of our economy can handle the unemployment problems involved in our transition to peace The private sector cannot he declares and so he proposes this grand design involving what could be (among other things) huge amounts of money to be taken from a budget already grotesquely in the red The possibilities for experimentation could indeed be tremendous and so could the possibilities for expense How all of this is to be soundly financed McGovern has yet to explain to the satisfaction of objective students (Copyright 1971 Field Enterprise Ine) traits of the human embryo modify human behavior chemical and neurological means to transplant vital organs to save the lives of once-doomed infants and to extend the life spans of the aged and the afflicted A revolution in the biological and medical sciences raises a whole spectrum of critical problems which appear to transcend the inherent capabilities of science and scientists to deal with them Dr Merlin Duval Assistant Secretary of Health Education and Welfare said to a Senate health subcommittee considering these issues last November Modern medical technology has made possible unprecedented experiences that society has yet to integrate into its traditions The biological discoveries just over the horizon said Professor Abram Chayes of Harvard Law School will give us power to intervene in evolutionary processes in a massive and much more controlled way than ever before Suppose we gain the power to decide who shall be born with what physical or mental characteristics or who shall be permitted to live he asked Conceptions of life and its values that underlie all moral and ethical precepts may have to be reexamined" In similar vein Dr Jose Delgado of Yale University who is developing methods of mind control by implanting electrodes in the brain said last year at a symposium sponsored by the Joseph Kennedy Jr Foundation: Our power to influence the physical and functional properties of the brain is to by by Brickman LoNAS I'M HOT Fo IT- ItfKMAr-fL Reader Contributions In verse PICTURE THE MAILBOXES All alone they stand In a row Like grim judges of a past age Staring over the desolate land With empty eyes They say nothing The sullen sky behind them Notices and grips them like a child Un wanting to give up a toy But there is one which escapes From the skys greedy clutch For within itself there is still A spark of hope a show of life It stands open its tongue Thurst out far in hope That it may catch a passing note PATTY BILUNGS Woodstock WASHINGTON An extraordinary movement is under way to put together the most conscientious thinking in the nation on new moral and ethical issues raised by advances in the medical and biological sciences The object is to develop a set of generally acceptable principles to guide those responsible for making life and death decisions Or as some put it to help man play God All over the country leaders in the sciences and in the humane studies are meeting talking agonizing as never before on the ethical and moral implications of the so-called biological revolution Both practicing physicians and research scientists are involved in this movement along with theolo'gians philosophers social scientists lawyers legislators and concerned citizens The movement represents a spontaneous rising of activity among a growing number of persons who feel the situation is urgent if the humane values of the past are to be preserved Their deliberations insofar as they influence the future of medical practice and research can affect the lives of everyone For never before have the options before medical science signified such fateful consequences for the individual and for society Among the new capabilities of medical science that call for difficult moral and ethical decisions are the ability to fertilize human egg cells in the laboratory to determine (and ultimately to choose) the sex and other genetic A Some people may have to adjust their notions of what is and what is not violent exercise as the result of two bits of information that surfaced this week College oarsmen live longer than their non-rowing classmates according to a study by a Harvard doctor This contradicts the widely held belief that crew heart shortens the lives of many competitive oarsmen And chess the game that is played in a sitting position is as physically demanding as boxing or football The new study on rowing was published this week in the Journal of 'the American Medical Association In it comparisons were made of 172 members of the Harvard and Yale crews in the classes from 1882 to 1902 and 172 non-rowers in the same classes The oarsmen averaged six years more of life than the others The rigors of chess were discovered in a bio-kinetic experiment that was conducted in 1970 at Temple University and the information was brought to light this week in connection with the upcoming world championship match in Iceland between world's champion Boris Spassky of Russia and challenger Bobby Fischer of the United States The Temple experiment measured the pulse heartbeat and other physiological factors of 12 volunteers during tournament chess play It is no coincidence therefore that both Spassky and Fischer get plenty of exercise they know they must Spassky runs and plays tennis every day Fischer does morning calisthenics and during the day swims plays tennis and bowls Foundation In addition new independent institutes are being founded such as the influential Institute of Society Ethics and the Life Sciences established in 1970 at Hastings-on -Hudson NY One of the problems unearthed by these explorers into the new terrain of medical ethics was the failure of medical education and other branches of higher education as well to deal forthrightly with the moral implications of advancing medical science New courses for students and workshops for faculty have been established among other places at the medical schools Columbia Harvard Georgetown and Dartmouth Bio-ethical problems are being recognized by Congress as a national concern The Senate has approved a resolution now in the House for the creation of a national commission to advise on such problems As intended by the legislative sponsors presidential appointments to the commission would bring together some of the best minds and the least self-serving men and women from the professions and the general public commission after making a two-year study and final report would then go out of existence No group could undertake to advise on matters with broader implications than these I I IN Livte AMP Let Live-.