Letters to the editor

Celebrate Mother’s Day with dairy product alternates

This Mother’s Day, May 8th, many of us will celebrate the powerful bond between mother and child. Tragically, the world-wide symbols of motherhood - dairy cows - never get to see or nurture their babies.

Newborn calves are torn from their mothers at birth, so we can seize and drink the milk that mother cows produce for them. The powerless, distraught mothers bellow for days, hoping in vain for their babies’ return. The babies are kept alive elsewhere, to soon become veal cutlets.

Dairy cows spend their lives on a concrete floor, chained, with no outdoor access. To maintain their milk flow, they are artificially impregnated each year. Around four years of age, their milk production drops and they are turned into hamburgers.

This Sunday, let’s honor motherhood and our natural compassion by refusing to subsidize cruelties of the dairy industry. Let’s replace cow’s milk and its products, laden with fat and cholesterol, with delicious, healthful, cruelty-free nut or soy-based milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream offered in every grocery store. Mother cows and our own bodies will thank us.

Pinter Verducci

A grateful mother thanks Nye County school teachers

Eleven years ago I enrolled a fourth and a first grade student with the Nye County School District. Today, that former fourth grader (PVHS graduate) is about to finish her junior year at California State University Long Beach and that little curly-haired first grader? Well, he is about to walk across the PVHS graduation stage and begin his higher studies at Humboldt State University.

As I reflect on their academic journeys, I am filled with gratitude and happy memories of the teachers that broadened the minds and encouraged the love of learning for my children.

I am also thankful to all of the NCSD staff that touched their lives in a positive way. Thank you for nurturing two of the most important people in my life.

I know it gets rough, and perhaps discouraging, but you really do make the difference. When the skies seem dark, please pause and look at your successes … your students are doing wonderful things in the world.

Sincerely,

Jill Skelton