Letters to the editor Feb. 24

Irresponsible

I read with some degree of incredulity the letter from Jessica Leskin titled "Disrespect at Staples," (Westport News Feb. 17). Despite running almost 14 column inches, the thrust of her complaint is that the Staples administration did not make a public announcement about Veteran's Day and it waited weeks to acknowledge the death of a former Staples teacher. She characterized these "failures" as "disrespectful" and "irresponsible" and stated that they made her ashamed of the school. I find it hard to believe that Leskin really believes what she wrote.

Staples is one of the finest high school in the state, if not the entire country. It is a shining example of what is great about Westport and much of its success can be traced directly to its administration. The "charter" of any public high school is to educate its students and to prepare them for higher education and, eventually, life. Both of my sons are Staples graduates and they have gone on to successful professional and business careers. I believe that much of their success can be traced directly back to what they learned at Staples, irrespective of whether the then-administration may have (or not) recognized Veteran's Day or the passing of a former teacher.

This is not meant to demean or minimize the contribution of our veterans or a former faculty member. Since one of the Staples assistant principals recently completed an extensive tour of duty in Iraq, I suspect that the administration is fully aware of and values the contributions of our veterans. That said, a school cannot be all things to all people. Overlooking something that a particular parent may think is important, does not a bad school make. Values are taught at home and schools cannot be a substitute for basic parenting, nor should they be. I applaud Ms. Leskin for wanting to honor the memories of our veterans or a former teacher and would encourage her to instill these values in her own children and their friends. It is both noble and right. But to state that Staples' failure to announce or publicize such matters is somehow "disrespectful" or "irresponsible" is "irresponsible" in itself.

Gregory J. Battersby

Westport

Thank you to MRC

On behalf of the Westport Weston Health District, we extend our sincere thanks to our Medical Reserve Corp (MRC) and Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). The Westport Weston Wilton MRC, and the Westport CERT, comprised of volunteers from our communities, donated over 420 hours of service in response to the H1N1 influenza pandemic. Our successful efforts were made possible through the service of our MRC and CERT teams.

The Westport Weston Health District has vaccinated over 3,800 individuals. Our partnership with the MRC, and the support of our CERT team, provided both medical and non-medical volunteers, who provided support in several ways. Volunteers answered phone calls, scheduled appointments, conducted patient screening, assisted with parking, directed patients inside the clinic, distributed health and emergency preparedness literature, and assisted our nurse vaccinators.

We are extremely grateful to these volunteers. Again, our success in providing the H1N1 vaccine to those in need is largely attributed to their support and generous donation of their time and skills. Thank you!

Ken Kellogg, Mark Cooper

and Monica Wheeler

Westport Weston Health District

Jungle Joe

The troubles that defeated Joe Stack (of airplane fame) are well known: people's selfishness and their cruelty. The selfishness of corporate and governmental people, which he mentions, is well documented by Michael Moore and Ralph Nader. But the cruelty is not well understood, by Stack or by us.

We all remember people picking on us, and you'll agree that we often pass it on to others. An old New Yorker cartoon shows a boss yelling at a pained employee. Next panel, the man barks at his cringing wife. Then she snaps at a surprised little kid, who finally bawls out the cat, which also looks surprised.

In the hurt category, strangely, what goes around comes around with undiminished strength. It seems like perpetual motion. Broken hearts, wars, lawsuits: People cycle through them with never-diminishing zeal. Imagine how you'd feel if you dropped a tennis ball, and its bounces did not get lower, but it kept bouncing as high as your hand was, on and on and on. You'd look around for a hidden force.

Hurts have this force, because they always hurt more than a person intended. For one thing, hurts are made worse by their surprise: You didn't expect the attack. For another, people cannot know a tenth as much about the thoughts of people near them, as they know about their own ideas. So the rock is always bigger when it hits than when you throw it.

And when the magnified hurt hits you, if you are already very happy or very sad, this new event can throw you into deep depression, as it did to Joe. I find that depression and elation act like a string vibrating; by limiting my "ups" to careful contentedness, I find it easier to stop the "downs" at a merely discontented level.

Joe Stack didn't know that trick, his manifesto shows. (The FBI suppressed it, but you can find thousands of copies by googling ritz moynihan 1706.) Poor Joe also didn't seem to understand dangers that lurk in the bushes. Naively, he seemed surprised that his software customers ran off during recessions; that the anti-establishment tax advice he dug up was poison; and that IRS staffers made ambushing him a pet project. He should have guessed that tax men will skip lunch to study a man who has a private plane. "It's a jungle out there, Joe," someone should have told him -- possibly the parents lost in a car crash when he was 4.

You can't save Joe Stack or the IRS guy his airplane killed, but you can let his farewell document make you a little more careful about who might hurt you, as you move through this jungle called life.

David Royce

Westport