A big thank you to the staff for their Christmas Memories (Kaleidoscope, Dec. 19).

I enjoyed them all, but RaeLynn (Ricarte’ s) “Tacky Christmas” was hysterical. I also laughed out loud picturing Sue yelling up the tree at her cat.

“The Nerd in The Basement” column by Majia Yasui was also great for a laugh. We all can use a few grins and you all certainly delivered.

Merry Christmas!

Questioned ballots

In the last two elections, three members of our immediate family have had our signatures, and thus our votes, questioned (one of them twice!).

Voting fraud conspiracies notwithstanding, we have to wonder: How many other voters in Hood River County have had this experience? What percentage of voters in each election go through this? What is the demographic and political breakdown of those whose signatures are questioned?

Although it took a month and a half for the county to send us the notification, we have a week to correct it; how many voters are out of town for the holidays and will not get the notice until too late? My husband and I have each been voting regularly for decades, with never a question before about our signatures. Our vote is our voice.

We will be investigating this, as there are important elections coming up in this next year. Meanwhile, we would be very interested to know how widespread this is.

Be grateful

I encourage everyone to take time this holiday season of love and peace to remember the men and women who have and are serving in our military

Let’s say a grateful thanks to those who have given us all the freedoms we have

Writer pretends

After receiving Cliff Mansfield’s second letter (Dec. 15) I hope you gave him a chance to rewrite it so that he could actually make some valid points.

Some people debate global climate change with a private agenda in mind. I have to wonder why Mansfield would say it’s the industries such as oil that have our best interest at heart above their profits. Why would he make the absurd claim that it’s the public interest groups that don’t have the public interest at heart?

He continues to pretend that there are people who think Earth’s climate is naturally stable. Lacking any real argument, he again brings up what everyone already knows as if it were a point on his side. Had he done research as he claims, maybe he could have given evidence and a good theory as to how it might be possible for the earth NOT to warm up when we’re increasing the levels of greenhouse gases. Why would he continue to pretend that he knows more about the climate than scientists with their degrees and years of experience?

Mr. Mansfield, if you’re worried about your Exxon stock losing value if people conserve oil, don’t be: Even with our best conservation efforts, the value of oil will continue to increase.

Responsibility

As the horrifying spectacle of the Bangladesh tragedy still unfolds before us, with thousands now known to be dead, perhaps we should be asking ourselves the question of whether we bear any responsibility for what happened.

A strange question? Let me put it another way: Say over the past 30 to 40 years, could we as a nation have done anything to prevent, or at least, lessen the loss of life that occurred on Nov. 15?

We don’t know whether global warming had anything to do with this particular typhoon. If it did, then we do bear a measure of responsibility. Forty years ago, some eminent scientists were warning us that the polar ice caps were melting and could affect global weather patterns. The attitude of our government, unchanged until recently, was simply that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to warrant any preventative measures. Now, of course, there is; and the only question is whether we can stop it.

Should we then have adopted the “precautionary principle,” endorsed by the International Forum on Globalization, which states that “indications” of harm, rather than “proof” of harm, should be sufficient to initiate remedial action? In other words, should the burden of proof rest with those who may be doing the harm, or with those who may be harmed? The “precautionary principle” may be as applicable to yesterday’s climatology as it is to today’s product safety crisis.

The other fact with which we have to reckon is the extreme poverty, crowdedness and vulnerability of the Bangladesh coastal population. This has not changed in the past decades. A tidal wave of more than 8 feet has long been known to threaten tens of thousands.

In 2006, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the founder of the Grameen Bank, now with over 2,000 branches in Bangladesh. In the past few decades, the bank has made more than 6,000,000 small loans, mostly to poor women, in order to build that nation’s economy from the village level up. Had the U.S. made grants of even a million or so dollars to the bank’s coastal branches, its most vulnerable residents could have afforded to build more storm-resistant communities or moved to higher ground.

As with global warming, we could have taken action years ago — but we didn’t. So should we have? This is the moral question with which you and I must now wrestle.