NH can afford the arts

On April 10, the New Hampshire House will vote on a proposal unanimously supported by Republicans who voted it favorably out of committee. The bill will defund the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and remove it from statutory existence and eliminate all eight authorized staff positions.

Fiscal prudence is wise, but this is shameful for a wealthy state. Art and history define our culture and who we are and how we got here. All of us. The proposal is mean spirited and, yes, cheap. Is this our conformist posture and what we have become?

Peter Valiante

Grantham

Keep food service in-house

I would like to respond to the recent article regarding OESU School Board considering the Abbey Group as a food service provider at Bradford Elementary School (“Board mulls outsourcing lunches”; March 26).

When I took on the job as chef at BES, after a career working everywhere from fine dining restaurants in New York and New Orleans to my own home catering business, I was dismayed to see the school’s nearly complete dependence on boxed frozen foods. I knew that if I was going to stay, I had to gradually guide the dining program to a more wholesome way of cooking using quality raw ingredients. With the arrival of Dawn Phelps as the dining manager a few months ago I now have the support to produce a variety of baked goods for breakfast and lunch and hot meals such as chili and stroganoff using local beef. Feeding 160-plus children wholesome breakfasts and lunches each day requires skilled and dedicated labor. With our team, including prep cooks Courtney Rose and Curtis Grady, we have the opportunity to revolutionize school food and have a tangible impact on our community, many of whom experience food insecurity. I encourage the OESU School Board to prioritize our kids’ meals and allow the BES food service program to develop a system-wide model for the district for Oxbow and Newbury schools instead of trying to dismantle it.

Billy Brigtsen

Bradford, Vt.

Keep knowledge alive

Recent Valley News articles have covered MAGA Republicans’ efforts to pull public funding away from public schools and give it to private schools, and to shut down the federal government’s Institute of Museums and Library Services. If these Republicans succeed, children’s access to real knowledge of science, history and literature will be severely limited.

Meanwhile, the MAGA contingent also takes aim at our schools’ science, social studies and language curricula and would require school libraries to eliminate books that refer to things like race, class, gender, history, biology and ecology. If Trump gets his way, perhaps the only library a school would need is a single bookshelf with a Bible (carefully censored to delete all those obscene “begats”) and the US Constitution.

On second thought, Trump might also want the Constitution to be censored. Otherwise, kids might get a hint of what democracy really requires, how our concept of democracy has been applied through the law, and what America once demanded of its leaders. For example, here’s a passage in the Constitution about Trump’s job description:

(The President) “...shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed....”

But “executed” has two definitions: “put into effect” and “killed.” In context, the Constitution’s sense of the word is clearly the former. Apparently Trump’s is the latter.

Rebecca Kvam Paquette

Hanover

Care of cabins suffers

The two dozen or so Dartmouth cabins are in total disrepair. All but the Ravine Lodge, (now a grad student hotel, are falling apart. They all need stain, the chimneys regularly cleaned, new windows, doors that don’t drag, new (non-aluminum) pots and pans, dry firewood, roads where your vehicle won’t drag. Some are lacking stairs in critical areas, doors that open, efficient wood stoves. Mice are such a problem, the Department of Health would shut them down.

Many cabin “users” trash the cabins, leaving garbage in the sink and breaking axe handle after axe handle. They are being totally mismanaged, funding is totally lacking. And there is no excuse as Dartmouth has an $8.2 billion endowment, the last time I checked. The students seem to have little interest in helping out. The only part of the DOC/Outdoor Programs well funded is the Dartmouth Skiway.

Jim Argentati

Lyme