Pelham - Windham News | September 23, 2011 - 3


The Word Around Town... Letters to our Editor


Volunteers Needed to Help Save FLOW


Te Friends of the Library of Windham


(FLOW) are looking for volunteers who would like to join our 2011-2012 Board. It is our volunteers that have made FLOW the successful organization that it is today. We have been able to provide financial support to the Nesmith Library for its recent renovations. In addition, many wonderful programs have been paid for by FLOW as a way to enhance the offerings of the library. Programs over the past year included Card Making and Cupcakes, Museum of Science Night Sky, LEGO Block Party, Summer Reading Program Kick-Off Party featuring Steve Blunt, Teen Kick-Off Party featuring Escape Artist Peter Vuono, Kindermusik Programs with Rose Lemay, Lindsay and Her Puppet Pals, Granite State Zoo’s A World Full of Wild Tails, Yoga Play Programs with Annika Kleschinsky, NH Audubon’s Raptor Rapture, End of Summer Reading Program featuring Wayne from Maine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Extravaganza!, Mini Fall Fun Festival, Dr. Seuss Birthday Celebration, Alex the Jester, Author and Illustrator Jay Piscopo, Hampstead Stage Company Presents Alice in Wonderland, Lon Cerels’ Magic-Pallooza Family Show, Meet Author and Illustrator Marty Kelley, Go Batty with Jerry Schneider, Author Sarah Lamstein “I Like Your Buttons”, Art programs with Kristine Brock, Project Nature programs with Mary Doane, and the Toe Jam Variety Show.


Te annual Strawberry Festival and


Book Fair, the town of Windham’s largest community event, is organized by the FLOW Board members. FLOW also offers scholarships to young adults in the community, as well as raises money to support museum passes, visits from authors, and other needs at our town’s library and schools. Te Friends currently have several positions open on our Board including: President, Vice President, Membership, Newsletter, and Strawberry Festival. Positions can be shared, so join with a friend! If we can not fill these positions, the future of FLOW is in jeopardy. Please consider joining our wonderful organization, so we can continue to offer exceptional programs for our library and community.


Also, joining the FLOW Board is a perfect


opportunity to meet new people and have lots of fun! So if you’ve ever taken advantage of all the great things our town library offers you or your family, please consider giving back by volunteering on the FLOW Board. Te Board meets once a month in October,


November, January, March, April, and May. Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 25, at 7 p.m. Te meeting will be held at the Nesmith Library and we hope that you will join us. For more information or to join, please contact one of our current Board members: Jennifer Simmons at jennis1623@hotmail.com, Angela Moynihan at angemoynihan@yahoo.com, Michelle Stith at mms_stith@yahoo.com, Pam Skwiot at skwiot@comcast.net, or Robin Krane at robin. bookfair@gmail.com


Pam Skwiot, FLOW – Windham


On behalf of my family I’d like to thank you all for being here today.


Tank You Grace House I’d like to give special


thanks to all the people at Grace House: Katie, Joanne, Melissa, Joline, Kelsee, Irena, Donna, Camie (also known as Shaniqua), and everyone else I was not so fortunate to meet. I would especially like to thank Susan Pike along with her husband Neil for opening the doors of Grace House and making it possible for my father to live the comfortable lifestyle he has been able to live for the past two and a half years. Tey afforded my father his pride, comfort and dignity that most people only hope they can achieve for the final years of their life. Tey welcomed and respected our family as large as it is, even when my aunts and uncles would hang out and visit with my mother and father and turn their daily routine into a somewhat hectic afternoon. Tey made it possible for my siblings and myself to continue on with the busy lives of our children. Tey have personally made it possible for me to deal with the biggest challenges and responsibilities I have had to face in all my years of work, knowing that my father was in there great care. Tey are truly all very special people and I can’t thank them enough.


Elena Rodrigues - Windham


Clergy Should Stay out of Politics


In response to “Another Liberal Catholic


Trap,” I can see the points on both sides. However, I must ask the question, why are clergy, or their hand puppets, involved in politics at all? We have both the religious left and the religious right pandering to politicians. Te purpose of the clergy is to provide spiritual guidance to their flock. Tey have no business in the field of politics. I challenge any clergyman to show me anywhere in the New Testament where the person they claim to follow, Jesus Christ, encourages his disciples to become political activists.


Jack King - Pelham


Next Governor Will Have the Opportunity to Lead NH to Greatness We thank Governor Lynch for his many


years of service to the state. His decision not to seek another term opens


a tremendous opportunity for candidates of any party to demonstrate that they’re serious about solving the state’s most vexing challenge: our chronic inability to pay for our priorities. Te next governor will own this challenge.


He or she, after all, is the next steward of the common good. Our ability to accomplish the common good is inextricably linked to our tax system. Without a better way to pay for our priorities, we risk eroding the very foundations of our prosperity. Decades of pledge-taking and avoidance behavior on taxes by our elected leaders has left a legacy of fiscal chaos that deeply and adversely affects our communities, our schools, our economic base, our infrastructure and our families. Despite the biennial search under rocks for revenue to help us foot our bills, the budget always falls short of meeting our fundamental needs – and drives up property taxes in the process. Enough is enough. Voters deserve to know how anyone seeking


the state’s highest office plans to responsibly deliver on things we have every right as citizens to expect. Going forward, we hope for some honest answers: how we can pay for things like good schools, viable transportation, public safety and emergency response, clean drinking water, and care for our most frail and vulnerable? Te next governor has the historic


opportunity to lead us to an efficient, sustainable and equitable tax system that pays for our priorities and lowers property taxes. Te people of New


Hampshire deserve real answers and common- sense solutions to these challenges, not more of the same empty campaign rhetoric. We ask those who wish to be our next governor to respect the intelligence of voters who are living daily with the consequences of our failure to make long overdue reforms.


Laurel Redden, President, Granite State Fair Tax Coalition - Salem


ALEC is


Corroding the Middle Class Te August 12 edition


of the Pelham~Windham News contained a letter by Rep. Jordan Ulery (R-Hillsborough 27) that recounted the trip of a “NH delegation of representatives” to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual meeting in New Orleans the previous week. He characterized the organization as “the nation’s leading non- profit, non-partisan organization,” but I question how he could make such a claim especially when all but one (an Independent)


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of their state chairpersons are Republican state legislators. Is this the “diversity of the members” that he refers to in his last sentence? A member of ALEC’s private industry board is a former Koch Industries executive and that same board is populated by representatives from many major corporations, including Exxon/Mobil, Wal-Mart, and several big pharma firms.


ALEC is the organization responsible for helping many state Republican organizations to craft legislation like our own Speaker O’Brien’s Right to Work bill that he is apparently unable to get enough support to pass. While ALEC may pass the legal sniff test as a non-partisan organization, any group so closely aligned with big corporate interests should be viewed at least with suspicion by voters. ALEC has led the charge against state employees and unions across the nation, trying to strip them of bargaining power and pension benefits. As Republicans loudly accuse Democrats of class warfare for asking the super rich to pay higher taxes, they are quietly working behind the scenes to weaken the middle class through efforts directed by ALEC and heavily funded by large corporate interests. While Rep. Ulery states that no taxpayer funds were spent for the NH delegation to attend, the funding of his partisan junket is a small issue when weighed against the impact of the formidable financial resources of such an uber-partisan entity as ALEC being brought to bear against the interests of working class citizens. Perhaps we should be asking Rep. Ulery and his cohorts who really write the bills they advance in Concord?


Andrew Weir - Hampstead


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