Letters to the Editor - August 13, 2026

Appreciation to all for a successful 19th Annual Jane Lloyd Fund Clambake

On Saturday, July 25, the Jane Lloyd Fund was proud to host our 19th Annual Clambake. It was once again a gorgeous day to be with friends, family, and neighbors to raise money for local individuals and families affected by cancer.

On behalf of the Jane Lloyd Fund Advisory Board, I want to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who made this year’s event such a tremendous success. Thank you to those who attended, our generous sponsors and donors, and the many volunteers whose hard work made the day possible. Whether you donated your time, talents, resources, or simply joined us in support, you made a meaningful difference.

The Jane Lloyd Fund exists to help members of our community who are struggling with the financial burden of cancer. By providing assistance with everyday living expenses, we help ease some of the stress so patients and their families can focus on what matters most—their health and healing.

Volunteers make events like our Annual Clambake possible. They are central to our organization and reflect the spirit of the Jane Lloyd Fund and our community. We want to thank each and every volunteer who has helped over the past 19 years. Thank you for your time, your effort, and your willingness to do the unglamorous work that still matters immensely. Thank you for showing up with competence, compassion, and kindness, And thank you for remembering, year after year, that community isn’t measured by who we are when things are easy, it’s measured by who we choose to be when someone needs help.

As we reflect on another successful Clambake, we are reminded that the true measure of our community is not simply in what we accomplish, but in how we care for one another. Together we are bringing hope, easing burdens and reminding our neighbors that they are never alone in their fight.

With heartfelt appreciation, we thank everyone who joined us for the 19th Annual Jane Lloyd Fund Clambake. Your generosity and compassion once again turned this annual event into a true celebration of community spirit and hope. We look forward to continuing this important mission together for many years to come.

Tanya Tedder

Scott Davis

Donna Lloyd Stoetzner

Brierley Lloyd Hannon

Salisbury

Thank you for laser light celebration

Thanks to everyone who joined us on Satre Hill the evening of August 2nd for the 250th anniversary celebration we postponed from that eventful July 4th night.

A large crowd, a spectacular laser light show, a DJ playing crowd pleasers, a food truck, free ice cream sandwiches and giant beach balls for the kids—it was a fun community party enjoyed by everyone!

The Salisbury Association is grateful for all the volunteers who helped with the event.Special thanks to SWSA for allowing us to use the ski jump hill and their facilities there.

Cynthia Walsh

President

Salisbury Association

Gratitude from Hotchkiss Library of Sharon

Just in time, last week’s downpours ceased and the sun came out for the 28th Annual Sharon Summer Book Signing, now a three-day weekend offering something for everyone.

Crowds gathered to meet the authors, purchase books, attend author brunches, dinners and cocktail parties, enjoy Saturday’s cookbook demonstrations, and laugh with joy at the free Kids’ Carnival on Sunday. It all unfolded seamlessly due to the incredible hard work of more than 40 volunteers, our hardworking staff, and dedicated board members who did everything from carrying boxes of books and tending bar to selling tickets and hosting events.

Since all proceeds support the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon’s operating budget, the hundreds of people who participated are key players in helping us to fulfil our mission as Sharon’s community center and to safeguard free access to information.Thanks so much to everyone who participated – your generosity funds programs for everyone – from toddlers to seniors. We are so grateful to all of you. We can’t do it without you.

With gratitude,

Gretchen Hachmeister

Executive Director

Lorna D. Edmundson

President,
Board of Directors

Sharon

The revenge of Socrates meets Oppenheimer

“Here a slop - there a slop - everywhere a-slop-slop”.. - just a little tune that pops into my head every time I navigate the news these days. AI and its attendant breathlessly reverberating falderall is making me feel like a four year old trying to learn all the verses to that childhood epic ‘Old MacDonald’.“Whoa.. how many chickens? goats? pigs?” AI is now audtioning to be, in my old-timer cranky estimation - ‘The Revenge of Socrates’ meets Oppenheimer at Alamogordo “I am become death - the destroyer of worlds.”

You see, I grew up in ancient times in the 1950’s and 60’s in rural Massachusets. Back then, there was an electricity that would, now and again, pulse through your veins when one of those wizards at Bell Labs came up with something mind-bendingly clever and cool - like transistors. You know, for radios -so you could carry music around with you as you bopped down the street.

Well, the ‘now and again’ wonder of appreciating and celebrating how some of our very best and brightest have figured out some new secrets of the universe to assist mankind on its journey, easing physical labor or simply enhancing the enjoyment of our modern lives has become something else -for me. The feeling is more like when, at the age of 16, I strapped an empty burlap sack to my backside under the 100 degree heat of a summertime tobacco net. I then sat and skivyed along dusty quarter mile long rows succoring the tobacco plants so they would grow straight, strong, tall and healthy. Healthy, so that the leaves could be harvested, dried, ‘processed’, rolled, packaged and shipped all over the world - to the devil’s bargain delight of all those addictees (sorry -customers).

To the first half of my thesis -‘AI is The Revenge of Socrates’. Socrates, you see, from what I’ve read in books, was totally against the written word. He thought it would, if pursued, pollute the mental accuity of people. No more training your mind to remember words, thus concepts, thus enabling a high level of truthful evaluation of reality and ideas.

The second half - ‘..meets Oppenheimer at Alamogordo “I am become death - the destroyer of worlds.”’AI-Anthropic, I’ve read, has come up with and is proceeding apace with a quaint little ‘legal’ sommersaulting assault on the the history of the written word. It lost in court when it tried to ‘pirate’ books to train its AI, so it moved on to buying, scanning - and then shredding the books (to cover it’s copyright violating behind).

Oh to be a fly on the wall in any of the 21st century boardrooms worldwide - filled with all of those ‘we know best-ies’ who have decided to move on from the passe capitalistic catechism of creative destruction to the newly minted millenial mantra - AI data centers will save humanity.

Memory is strange. Put it in a human brain and it learns. Put it on a chip and it earns. “Ee, i, ee, i, Oh!”

Michael Moschen

Cornwall Bridge

We need a new foreign policy

We need a new foreign policy. A recent issue of Esquire, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence contained a startling fact that too many of us are unaware of – 239 of our 250-year history has been spent at war. Just since 1945, the U.S. has been involved in dozens of wars, all of which we have lost.

Our tax dollars are being used to finance a war economy. We devote more money to the military than any other country on the planet and more than the next 10 countries combined. The Trump regime is proposing, and our Congress will probably appropriate 1.5 trillion dollars to fund the Department of War in the coming fiscal year.And, that’s not all of it, additional billions devoted to undermining other countries’ governments covertly through the C.I.A. are appropriated and unaccounted for annually.

In all these wars, the U.S. has killed or stood by while others under its influence have killed millions of innocent people. For documentation, see, “War Made Indivisible” by Norman Solomon. Our war making and support for aggression has not gone unnoticed around the world. In a survey conducted between January and March 2026 in 98 countries of over 94,146 people world-wide, the Democracy Perception Index 2026, a majority of those asked believed the U.S. is the most dangerous country on the planet.

Our foreign policy has long been based on domination not cooperation. Increasingly, it relies on military intervention and political interference in the affairs of other countries using assassination of foreign leaders and the targeting of civilians as its main tools. In addition to these crimes, these wars are bankrupting us with billions in debt. The U.S. military is also a major source of pollution contributing to the destruction of our planet’s environment. See the film, Earth’s Greatest Enemy by Abbey Martin. And, most importantly, this foreign policy is being carried out with the consent of Congress but not the voters.

A majority of Americans are against the war with Iran; recent primary election results demonstrate widespread rejection of Israeli aggression and U.S. complicity in Gaza. Millions of Americans are against wars of aggression and forever wars. This is support for a different foreign policy; one based on peaceful-co-existence and non-aggression. Honest diplomacy, not war, is the main engine of a successful foreign relations strategy. A strengthening of the United Nations and the principles of mutual respect and cooperation among nations is something for us to fight for.

Leonard Polletta

Lakeville

We need new speed limits, not surveillance

“Speed camera debate continues across Northwest Corner towns” in the August 6th issue of the Lakeville Journal would have been better titled, “Local politicians smell potential new revenue source.” We don’t need more of Big Brother’s watchful eye, we need less of it. At some time or other, almost everyone drives faster than a posted speed limit. Speed limits were assigned to local roads by traffic engineers more than 70 years ago. Automobiles in the 1950s and 1960s were larger, heavier, had poorer brakes, less precise steering, and less sophisticated tires.

Today’s cars are infinitely safer and are capable of negotiating 35 MPH roads at 50 MPH. Yet, when is the last time a speed limit on a local road was raised? The solution, to me, would be to simply do nothing. What we are witnessing is traffic flowing at prevailing rates, which may be somewhat faster than traffic engineers stipulated 70 years ago. Speed limits on local roads should be considered suggestions. The majority of the driving public has common sense and good judgement. Those who don’t never had it in the first place and saddling the rest of with artificially low speed limits will not magically equip them with it. If we really wanted to cut down on speed-related accidents we would limit speeds on all roads to 25 MPH. We don’t do that because we accept a certain number of accidents as the price we pay for convenience and expediency. Politicians should not waste their time seeking solutions to problems that do not exist.

Richard Kopec

Sharon