In Agreement
Dear Editor: I would like to give a loud “Amen” and “thumbs up” to a letter submitted by Mr. Iancucki (Concern for Our Country, June 24).
I agree it’s about time we as Catholics spoke out against President Biden and our government officials for their blatant bias against all that we as Catholics hold sacred, namely protecting the innocent unborn and now the corruption of our children in many public schools.
Our church hierarchy beginning with our Pope must speak out more clearly and forcefully against the prevailing steep decline in morality that has become so apparent in this country.
Paul Manheimer
Oakland Gardens
The fourth of July is a day of great importance
Dear Editor: In 1776 we fought as a people for the birth of a great new nation founded on Democracy.
Since than we have fought many wars and many lives were lost for the cause of democracy. My own family has fought for Democracy.
My great-great grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War, my grand- father fought in the Civil War, my father in WWI and WWII served as a air raid warden and Chaplain and I myself served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam era.
Now today I serve as a member of the American Legion Post #103 in Douglaston. In this democracy, we have the right to speak our minds, the right of freedom of religion and the right to vote for those who will best represent our rights of freedom and justice for all.
So in the next election, please get out and vote. Let not our ancestors, who have died for what most of us hold most dear, and that is freedom, to have not have died in vain.
As it says in the Declaration of Independence,” We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
So, let freedom ring on the 4th of July. Remember this too: The 4th of July is not just a day off, for store sales and barbecues but a day of Independence from tyranny.
Frederick R. Bedell Jr.
Bellerose, N.Y.
Close Guantanamo
Dear Editor: Twenty-one years ago the United States opened the prison at Guantanamo to hold suspected terrorists.
There are 31 people still detained there without a trial. Along with costing the American taxpayer $13 million per person per year, it is a flagrant violation of habeas corpus. It is time that President Biden has the detainees either tried in a federal court or returned to their respective countries. Guantanamo defies American values and needs to be closed.
Mary Geraghty
Windsor Terrace
Saving Harvests Through Composting
Dear Editor: Jesus spoke about nothing more often than generosity and greed, so many Christians understand the moral value of feeding the poor, and the great evil of hoarding our wealth.
Matthew 25 even tells us how feeding the poor determines our eternal salvation. But when it comes to the wasting of food, we have no moral tradition, or vocabulary even, to address it. The same calories and nutrients have been recycled between plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, etc., for hundreds of millions of years.
When we throw a sandwich in the garbage, it is not simply that it could have fed one person for for meal. We put it in a chemical-filled dump, essentially removing it from the food chain forever, depriving every future generation of all those nutrients.
And while I used the example of a single sandwich, Americans throw away 1,000 pounds of food per person per year, an unfathomable loss for every future harvest.
Composting our waste produces two free sources of energy (heat & methane) and an incredible fertilizer. These issues need to be addressed by the Church as food shortages can be global and enduring for generations.
Joe Muller
Glendale
Migrant Experience
Dear Editor: A response to a letter by William Carroll, Woodside (What’s Next?, May 20) I think we sometimes miss the point of migration.
My parents’ parents came here for a better life. They also knew that a better life might not happen for a few generations.
My father, who weighted 117 lbs. and carried 50-lbs. bags of root vegetables on his back 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. He had to leave school in the third grade.
He and my mother raised three sons and one daughter. If money were their measure of success, they failed. But if pride in their children’s success was the measure, they left this world very rich and successful.
My grandparents left a country where the potato blight almost killed them, and came to a country where potatoes were for all.
The streets may not have been “paved with gold,” but their stomachs were full and their grandchildren got an education to fulfill the migrant dream. It isn’t easy but it gets better.
John Fitzgerald
Jackson Heights