One of my favorite places to walk and run has been the pathway around Back Cove in Portland. I like the scenic views of the water and birds as I traverse the 3.5-mile loop.

I also appreciate the relative safety of being able to exercise off the road to avoid hazardous traffic. And it’s great to share this special place with like-minded people who are out to get some exercise. However, the path is no longer one of my favorite places to run and walk. That’s because of the crushed stone which was recently placed on many portions of the path.

For me, the uneven surface now presents a problem in that I have to very carefully watch every step I take to avoid twisting an ankle. Also, because of the stones, I have had to slightly adjust the way I run, which is negatively affecting my hip joints.

This is not good for anyone, especially this senior, who would like to continue running as long as I can.

Using the Back Cove path has become perilous for me and others, more of whom I now see walking or running on the adjacent grass and on Baxter Boulevard. I wonder if something other than crushed stone could be used on the path to provide a smoother, safer surface.

Ron Beyna

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Cumberland

 

State should have runoffs for elections to high office

 

We have a year and three months before our next big election, plus two more before we have another chance to elect a governor. That should be enough time for an essential change in our voting laws.

I am a Maine resident and feel disenfranchised having a governor who was elected with just 38 percent of the votes cast. I’d feel the same about any statewide public official.

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I do, however, think that independent and third-party candidates are not “spoilers.” They add choice and new ideas to our two-party system and should be encouraged.

It is time for Maine to consider runoff elections – either instant runoffs or second elections including only the top two candidates. To those who might say, “too expensive” or “too complicated,” I would reply that in a free country, nothing is more important than a fair and effective electoral process. If we want to preserve our democracy, we must devise a system in which the winner earns at least 50 percent plus one vote to win.

The people of Maine are not well represented by a candidate who earns any less.

Vicki Adams

Kennebunk

 

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Writer stands up for country when U.S. lawmakers won’t

 

In regard to the letter that appeared in the June 24 Press Herald concerning “What’s the future of Social Security?” written by David Call, I say to him, thanks for standing up for our country. Too bad his subject matter – “the hired help in Washington” – won’t do the same!

Lindley Deering

Raymond

 

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Hatred of Israel created by that nation’s own acts

 

I write in opposition to “Peace will come when Palestinians accept Israel’s security needs,” a June 20 column by Stuart Gilbert of Falmouth, a supporter of the American-Israel PAC lobby. Mr. Gilbert describes Israel’s security needs as requiring not only international security guarantees, but the good will of the Palestinians. For those Israelis and American Jews who believe that Israel should hold on to as much territory as possible, security is an ever-receding horizon. They can always claim to feel insecure.

Israel has an estimated 100 to 200 atomic bombs, the strongest army in the Middle East, the latest planes and technology that the United States can give it, and a subsidy of about $500 per person per year, free of oversight, from the U.S. taxpayer.

It has already secured the destruction of Iraq and constantly threatens the destruction of Iran and Lebanon. Against international law it continues to occupy the Golan Heights (part of Syria) and the whole of Palestine after only recently giving up the southern part of Lebanon.

Its treatment of the Palestinians is sickening. Nevertheless, our Congress (intimated by Mr. Gilbert’s powerful AIPAC lobby, which strives to label those who dare to criticize Israel’s government as anti-Semitic) rises to its feet time and time again to applaud Benjamin Netanyahu, who scoffs at our president and flouts international law.

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We give several billions a year – no discussion of that being cut to balance the budget! – to a country practicing territorial conquest and slow-motion ethnic cleansing. No wonder there are many who see the United States as hypocritical in our “values.”

If there are some, like Mr. Gilbert, who, with their passion for maintaining Israel’s conquests, blame others for its sense of insecurity, it is because they know how much Israel has made itself hated.

Letitia Ufford

South Bristol

 

Lack of retirement plan not lower-income people’s fault

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Mr. Kurt Christiansen of Windham believes the world is black and white. At least that’s what he alludes to in his recent letter to the editor (“Marxism not dead, it’s alive in Washington,” June 21) by curtly dismissing those who do not have a retirement plan as tools of the Democratic Party.

Such is the level of rhetoric in today’s sphere of political dialogue: complete lack of knowledge of an issue and the use of one’s good fortune as the means by which others should be judged. Millions of Americans go off to work every day with the knowledge that they may never be able to retire. Or if they do, they have to depend on the Social Security system as their retirement fund. Why?

Because the massive profits that fund Christiansen’s retirement are made in part by underpaying workers or shipping their jobs to some Third World country where workers often die before retirement. It’s hard for many to fund a retirement account when the price of oil, food, health care and shelter increase by double digits and one’s income stays the same or in many cases decreases.

Not everyone can be a professional. There will always be the guy or gal who sweats for a living. And those are the people who most likely have no retirement account from their company, which could just as easily ship their jobs to China as to treat them decently. Unless some element of fairness returns to the U.S. economy, that Second Amendment of which Christiansen wistfully speaks may end up at his ideology’s door as angry workers demand fair treatment.

Howard Hanson

Biddeford

 


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