Saluting another letter writer

Mel Marks. Remember that name if you don't know it already. He is a letter writer of note, always on issues similar to those taken up in this blog and occasional letters too.

Earlier this week, Marks' letter in the Trenton Times, "Take a closer look at how we value life," wondered in print whether the same people who help save birds from the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico then eat a bird for dinner.

Without name-calling or otherwise turning readers off, Marks says many people (most people?!) "compartmentalize" what they know about UN-natural disasters such as factory farms and related health and environmental issues when shopping for food. They "subsidize the systematic killing of . . . animals for their dinner table" -- probably while tsk-tsking about the horrors in the Gulf.

And such behavior happens on a broader scale too, Marks says. Humans are also scarily willing to tolerate killing of people in war while rushing to help them after a tsumani or earthquake.

Selective reading, seeing and hearing; selective knowing.

Marks points out that people could start making a difference by reforming their personal diets. Change can start at home, or, think globally, act locally.
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'Harvesting' column inches

My last post, about the awful "Outdoors" column from the Times of Trenton earlier this month, prompted my checking yesterday's paper to see if it's a weekly thing. Apparently so. Even worse: the latest one was way long -- would you believe about 27 column inches? That in contrast to the length allowed the Times' "regular" columnists, which this morning was about 17 inches in the case of Sharon Schlegel. Her reward for writing well is to get less space, whereas his turgid, disingenuous drivel goes on and on.

It looks to me as if "Outdoors" is (believe it or not) a paid column -- that is, he or his interest group may pay the Times for the right to hog space and be published, without benefit of editing beforehand. All in the interest of "the harvest"!

The only good news here is that my letter to the editor of the Times was printed today. Essentially, it's the same as the post before this one, "Who is he kidding?", except that my deliberate "bloody vein" was for reasons unknown to me changed to "gruesome vein." Too sanguine? Or too un-euphemistic?
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