Letters to the Editor 10/3/24

HVHRS Travel Club thanks Region One community for support

The main goal of the HVRHS International Travel Club and Northwest Corner: Students Without Borders has been to make international travel more affordable and accessible for every student. Thanks to the generosity of the Region One community, over $45,000 was raised to meet this goal at the sixth annual Wine Dinner and Auction at the White Hart on Sept. 13.

With these funds, more than 60 students have the opportunity to travel to Italy/Germany and to Thailand in 2025. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who has supported us in our dreams to visit these amazing countries. Not only will we expand our own world view by learning about these cultures, histories, languages and more, but we will be bringing the lessons we learned overseas back to HVRHS.

Our thanks first goes to Laura Bushey and Northwest Corner: Students Without Borders for spending many months organizing the fundraiser. With their hard work, the evening was a huge success. We also thank the White Hart Inn for hosting the dinner, preparing a delicious menu and supporting public education.

We’re so appreciative of our teachers, Mr. John Lizzi, Mrs. Danielle Melino, Mrs. Taylor Tavera and Mrs. Letitia Garcia-Tripp, for their guidance and dedication. These hard-working teachers made time in their already busy schedules to work alongside us and show us the lifelong joys of travel.

In addition to this fundraiser, we are also extremely grateful for the generous grants from the 21st Century Fund. Your assistance enables us to discover the world beyond our classrooms.

Lastly, our heartfelt thanks goes to our local businesses, organizations, parents, families, friends and neighbors. This was a true community effort, and we feel very fortunate for your support!

Ellie Wolgemuth

Class of 2025

HVRHS International Travel Club

George Logan’s legal woes

This past weekend we learned that George Logan owes over $50,000 in penalties for failing to carry the required New York workers’ compensation insurance for his employees who might be injured on the job. The case is over four years old, and the penalties continue to pile up.

The GOP candidate for the 5th Congressional District ran a construction outfit in New York for several years while also working for an Eversource subsidiary here in Connecticut. Logan has called the charges in his case, now before the New York Supreme Court “a clerical error.” He said he is seeking counsel to sort out his legal difficulties. Shouldn’t George Logan be more concerned that his employees were fully covered if anything happened to them on the job?

This is definitely not the kind of high-handed behavior we voters need as we decide who should represent the 5th District in Washington. Early voting starts on October 17, and the choice is clearer than ever. Don’t make a “clerical error” on your ballot — vote to re-elect Congresswoman Jahana Hayes for another term as our representative in the U.S. House.

Frank Fitzmaurice

Sharon

‘What is worth more, Art or Life?’

“Cutting off your nose to spite your face.” The cost-benefit analysis of that saying has just splashed across our collective consciousness — again. Who’da thunk that a couple of opened cans of soup could get our collective minds (certainly mine) scampering up and down the cultural/political/economic ladder like red squirrels on the trunk of an oak tree on a chilly fall morning.

“Just Stop Oil” activists have struck again, serving up (rather messily) a couple of cans of Heinz tomato soup (nutritious?) onto two of painter Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ paintings at the British National Gallery. “What is worth more, Art or Life?” — was the statement spoken by one of the gastronomic miscreants. As a person who has, in my adult years, come to relish really good questions — I can let that one roll around inside my noggin for a bit. And as a performing artist that over the decades has crossed paths with all sorts of art created by arts practitioners of many kinds and at many levels, I’m trying to let my mind find a way in with this.

First, the video of the act of desecration is precise, clear and close up, easy to ingest — so to speak. The aesthetic taste buds are stimulated and percolate within a definable culinary oeuvre. As a protest, the clean assertive lines of splashing suggests wave after wave of dystopian anger subsumed into the intense moral gravity of the follow-on slow dripping of the soup down the stalks of flowers and onto the frames. As well, the clashing soup colors of ‘tomato-industrial’ violently striking canvasses filled with such serene warm images of simple nature, evokes a corrosive dissonance in the digestive track of the imagination. And, as we all know, Van Gogh was fortunate to have painted in a time when the world’s atmosphere was set chromatically afire by the ash-ejecta from the Indonesian super volcano — Krakatoa — a fitting and powerful comparative moral relativity inescapable to all knowledgable aficionados of our present ‘inconvenient truth’ vis-a-vis climate change.

On the whole, I find the stated question “What is worth more, Art or Life?” to be prescient, evocative and resonant. I do hope the cost-benefit analysis of this striking production does not force it into the post-reductionist trap — of falling on deaf ears.

Michael Moschen

Cornwall Bridge

Supporting Harding for CT’s 30th

As a young woman I want to express my appreciation for the work Stephen Harding has done to keep the maternity ward open at Sharon Hospital. Without leaders like Stephen, who are willing to work across the aisle, we could have seen this critical service disappear.

When this service was at risk, he showed real leadership by working directly with the community and healthcare providers to find solutions. His commitment gives me hope that someone in Hartford truly understands the challenges we face in rural CT and is determined to make a difference for families like mine.

Stephen’s dedication to resolving issues such as Sharon Hospital shows how much he cares about our community’s well-being. He is a father and husband who wants to make it safe and affordable for families like mine and isn’t afraid to take a stance when something is wrong. We need more leaders like him, who understand the real-life impact of their decisions and are willing to stand up for what matters.

Jacqueline Kuns

Torrington