Thank you from Ski and Jennifer
Dear Editor:
Words cannot begin to express the gratitude we feel for the outpouring of love and support we’ve received since our son Tom’s death. Every visit, every hug, every card, every call, every flower, every dish of food, and every kind thought has helped us more than you can imagine.
The memorial services for Tom, both in the high school gym and in Wenatchee, were beautiful and incredibly meaningful to us. We’d like to say thank you to everyone who attended, spoke, sang, organized, and helped. We constantly replay the memories of everyone we saw, and it brings us a sense of love and support that we know will help carry us through the days and years to come.
We are profoundly grateful to have so many friends in this valley, and to remember how each friendship and experience enriched Tom’s life. We will miss him every day, but knowing that all of you will be walking beside us and remembering Tom, warms our hearts, giving us comfort and strength.
With all our heart and soul, thank you.
Ski and Jennifer Zbyszewski, Carlton
Time to go
Dear Editor:
Why do many Americans continue to support abortion as birth control when modern non-abortive birth control methods (i.e., the birth control pill, IUDs, the patch, etc.) are available in so many forms and places these days? Abortion is far more dangerous to the mother than modern birth control methods, and is cruel to the unborn. It’s time for abortion to be abandoned as birth control. As a society we have made it cheap and easy for women to obtain other birth control methods.
Planned Parenthood, which receives large amounts of our tax dollars and performs huge numbers of abortions, should have ceased to exist decades ago, yet our society in general continues to support it. And Planned Parenthood certainly does not respect the body of the aborted baby as revealed in the recent video tapes of Planned Parenthood employees munching their food while discussing the distribution of dead baby body parts for profit. This is the result of treating unborn babies as nothing more than blobs of cells. Believing that, it becomes easy to treat their bodies as a commodity, to be sold to the highest bidder. This is a vile practice and should stop immediately.
For those who claim we need embryonic stem cells for scientific research, read the literature on stem cell research. Adult stem cells found in fully developed living people are now being used to treat disease. In fact, in 2012 two scientists working in this research area received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
As for the women’s health services Planned Parenthood provides, many if not all of these services are now available through low-income community health clinics.
Planned Parenthood was begun by Margaret Sanger, a nurse. Even Ms. Sanger advocated the use of contraception as a safer alternative to the higher risk and less acceptable procedure of abortion. Continuing to promote abortion and then using the bodies of these babies as a revenue source must stop now. As a society, we cannot continue to condone these actions.
Abortion, selling dead babies’ bodies, and Planned Parenthood, it’s time for you all to go.
Chrystal Perrow, Winthrop
Physicals went well
Dear Editor:
Every year, during the heat of August, high school athletes begin to train for their fall sports. Before they hit the field, court or track, all students must pass a pre-participation physical. Last year, Fire Incident Command at Liberty Bell High School bumped school physicals to The Country Clinic, so it was with relief, and under early August blue skies, that we held this year’s free physical event at Liberty Bell.
Being at the high school allowed broader involvement of the new athletic director, Chase Rost, who met with athletes and their families. The larger venue also meant more room for the volunteer medical team of Dr. Wallace, Dr. Tuggy, Danielle Micheletti PA-C, Dr. Linck, Charlene Hawley ARNP, Laura Brumfield ARNP, Andrew Nelson PT and RNs Dotti Wilson, Kathleen Dalton and Marty Grosenick. Over 70 student athletes stayed as long as they wanted to ask questions, air concerns, arrange follow-up care, and, if they didn’t pass their vision exam, be given a voucher for a free eye consult, donated by Confluence Health. Thank you to all who participated.
Unfortunately, some important aspects of medical care could not occur at Liberty Bell — vaccines and the long-term management of asthma and ADHD, for example. Please be sure your children see their regular primary provider to insure continuity and complete care.
And think about what you would do if your best friend got behind the wheel, drunk. I heard students say, “take the car keys, grab more friends to stop the driver, call for a ride” — everyone had ideas. Do you?
Ann Diamond, MD, Winthrop
Assessing risks
Dear Editor:
“Homeowners insurance may be harder to come by” (Sept. 30) suggests that the wildfires of the past two years could drive up policy prices. The article also says, “A lot of companies have decided they’re just not going to write [policies] in specific areas.” Bad news indeed for people owning property in certain areas of the valley. But since insurance companies base price increases on potential high-risk factors, then may we who have already had fires in our areas expect a reduction in our premiums, based on the factual depletion of fuels no longer posing a dire threat?
I get their actuaries’ logic — continued drought means unburned areas are high-risk, therefore deserving of higher premiums. But why shouldn’t the office of the Washington state insurance commissioner extend this logic to areas no longer at high risk, and suggest or mandate a lower premium for those of us who have had fire consume much stored fuel in our immediate environments?
Aristides Pappidas, Winthrop
