Loved Sun’s Summer camp guide
Editor: I just wanted to take the time to thank you for the wonderful summer resource guide you published this year. I can’t tell you how many parents came into our business and said what a great source for summer activities it was for them. Sonoma has a wealth of programs for the children of our community and your guide showed that we have something for everyone! Thanks again, and I hope this is something that you decide to do every year!
Sarah Duran LeVine
Sonoma
Agrees with Joan Huguenard
Editor: There could not be a more lucid, comprehensive view of the ‘evolutionary’ progress of humankind consciousness relative to war, than Joan Huguenard’s July 15 column. It always is so gratifying to have someone put private thoughts one has had into effective words. It brought to mind even more ancient times – as when the generals and their huge armies went marching off on their “Spring expeditions.” The times of Alexander the Great and, after he died, his surviving territorial generals and their half-siblings descendants, in constant combat, all the way down to Rome, when it was more a fight between Caesar and Pompey than any kind of altruistic international intervention. Thanks, Joan, for being such a valuable asset to my weekly reading of my favorite newspaper.
Tosca Lenci
Boyes Hot Springs
Hunting is not “manly”
Editor: Why, in the 21st century, does a society tolerate the killing of animals for sport? The question was again brought to mind by the running story of the fellow in Diamond A, who shot and killed a frantic doe trapped in his yard. He apparently didn’t have a hunting license, it was not deer season and he was in a residential area — all no-no’s under the hunting laws. But had all the legalities been in place, would the killing have been any less savage, brutal, outrageous or despicable?
Public revulsion confirmed how murderously crazy the very idea of hunting has become. Yet with countless species and entire eco-systems in free-fall toward extinction, in 2010 it is still possible to buy a license — issued by the state — to kill living wild creatures for pleasure.
Spaghetti-western machismo justifications of hunting are shop-worn beyond corny: “It’s part of Our Heritage;” “It controls animal overpopulation and vermin;” “It creates jobs;” “It gets me out in nature;” “It teaches youngsters to handle firearms.” As if jails and schools don’t have enough kids murderously proficient with firearms.
We’ve tolerated these and other insane reasons but they are all — as hunters would say – bear-scat, particularly in light of studies linking violence toward animals and violence toward people, many of whom are murdered every day because they, too, are regarded by someone as less than human; i.e., as animals.
Killing wildlife to eat may have justified hunting in the sepia-toned pioneer days of our past, but it is totally unnecessary and unjustified now. In a nation whose reputation for violence has few equals in the developed world, pride in any sort of “killing tradition” — even as to animals — is or should be a soul-shredding self-indictment.
It is time our culture grew up, took off the silly coonskin cap and stopped killing animals for pleasure. Civilized societies outlaw animal blood sports and sacrifice — e.g., bull-fighting and dog-fighting, to name a few — and it is a felony in this state to bash in the head of a puppy or set fire to the neighbor’s cat.
Statistics show that hunting is on the decline, but not fast enough for the animals. And while only about 3 percent of the population still kills animals for pleasure, killing has a government agency — the Fish and Game Commission – to promote and protect hunting and even increase the number of animal killers. The Commission sells licenses to kill: Seedfg.ca.gov/licensing/hunting/huntdescrip.html for the price on the head of your favorite beautiful creature.
The visually impaired can get a license, as can the disabled who must use a vehicle – talk about irony – to kill or cripple wildlife. And even a twelve year-old who cannot buy porn, cigarettes or beer can get a license to kill animals.
Lest gun-owners get their Carhartts in a twist fearing that black helicopters are coming for their assault rifles, fear not. Indeed, more guns in the right hands might end hunting once and for all. Certainly, if the animals could shoot back it would finally turn hunting into a real sport. Or, the Commission might license hunters to hunt other hunters, for a fee, of course; think of it as Paintball with lead paint.
Those who agree that last bit wasn’t at all funny should be congratulated for having a sense of revulsion against senseless killing “for the fun of it.” Because that is, after all, the whole point.
Realistically, however, given the small but very powerful pro-killing lobby, it will take many fearless, loud and determined voices to ban hunting once and for all. Along with slavery, the genocide of native Americans and vicious discrimination against so many categories of “different” people, it is time to put animal sport killing out of business and into our storied past, where it belongs.
Bob Edwards
Sonoma