Letters to the Editor Candles on the Cushman Street Bridge On the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq there was a candlelight vigil in Fairbanks on the Cushman Street Bridge, and it was attended by well over 100 people. As I stood on the Cushman Street bridge last night, a cold wind blew across the river ruffling the states’ flags and chilling me until my bones rattled. I looked into a watercolor-wash sunset in the western sky and I brought to consciousness, on this two-year anniversary, those two years now forty years gone that I spent in Vietnam as a hospital corpsman. The small candle I held lent little warmth to the chill that shivered through me, yet I held onto it and with it focused myself as a single point of light of remembrance for those bright lives blown cold in that war—and I stood in solidarity with those whose lights now flicker and darken in an equally insane wind. And I recalled into consciousness the terror of battle, as a reminder of what must be endured by those who go to war. I recalled, too, my own confusion, and anger, with those who protested our war so long ago, and I focused on that point of light with a knowing of the troubled journey ahead for those now serving. Only presidents smugly emerge with grinning declarations of battles ended: Those who bear the lance and sword of war are forever wounded by their actions—those who go to battle for the sake of peace are forever more embattled. I stood, last night, in witness to the horror of war and to the possibility of peace, recalling into consciousness that endless line of ghosts who know my name, recalling their names and faces, their fear and their dying, and to represent them and their sacrifices—a single point of light on a bridge to a kinder world. I stood, holding my single point of light in the belief that we can transform the creative potential of war to build bridges of understanding over which our children might walk into a more peaceful world—a world where love might replace hate and wisdom replace arrogance. I stood, knowing that only by virtue of my being there last night, is it possible. I stood for these things, as I stood for God and Country so long ago, but with infinitely more conviction. Nucular Isn’t Once again enjoyed the new issue of ER very much. Especially Doreen's poem pg. 3 and Thela's video reviews. However, I don't know if he was being sarcastic, but you might want to tell KWM Farmen that "nucular" is not a word, ever, never, not at all. (Having it be a word at all would almost vindicate GWB's mispronunciation of "nuclear"—"oh, I thought it was that other...you know...nucular thingy.") The correct word for both of Farmen's "definitions" in his attempt at "educational purposes" is "nuclear"—it's not a "nuculus," after all. Oh well, whaddaya want from someone who would eulogize Hunter Thompson? (I do of course always appreciate a dressing down of the idiot-in-chief.) TTFN, The Editor Replies: ACK! I thought I checked it. I remember distinctly being surprised that it was in the dictionary. Hallucination? Dream? Fantasy? I've finally done it—pushed myself over the edge and am slipping into la-la land. Erg. But I am in part (microscopically, so to speak) vindicated: There is such a word as Nucula. (I’m holding Webster’s Unabridged International Dictionary open on my lap as I write, just to be absolutely sure I’m not making this up.) It is (ahem) “a genus of protobranchiate bivalve mollusks, having a small nutlike equivalve shell, very large labial palpi, the heart situated dorsal to the rectum and the foot with a flat ventral surface or sole.” My brief hope that thus nucular could mean like a genus of protobranchiate etc. is dashed when I look at the alternate forms, only to see that the adjective is nuculid or nuculoid. So, mea culpa. I didn’t catch it, and if the author was testing me, I flunked. If the author wasn’t testing me, I still flunked, because an editor’s chief role is to keep an author from looking silly—and if she doesn’t, then the editor looks silly. So, my sincere and public apologies to KWM Farmen, and to our readers. —Ed. The Other Guy’s Editorial I read, with some amusement, the editorial today in that larger newspaper located slightly to the northeast of your offices. Headlined “Beware the howling,” it exhorted Alaskans to brace themselves for the furor sure to attend the killing of the alpha male wolf from the Toklat pack, the last mature representative of the wolf family studied continuously since the Muries began taking notes on them decades ago. The editorial overflowed with barely contained righteousness, tossing terms like “taken in compliance with the law” into the verbal mix, exhorting—or perhaps threatening—the game board members not to take seriously the inevitable pressure to expand the buffer zone around the national park; the News-Miner spokeswriters would hate to see any more territory in which wolves could move safely, without fear of traps or bullets. Judging by previous editorials in which aerial wolf hunting was stridently defended, the paper’s position seems to be the classic “the only good wolf is a dead wolf.” Well, fair enough. They have the support of most of the legislature and the governor’s office in that view. But for those of us who have trouble with the now-prevailing judgment that Alaska’s wildlife falls only into the categories of good (livestock, such as moose and caribou), bad (other predators that eat Alaskans’ livestock), or dismissable (the inedible and untrappable little tweets and fuzzies), something seems to be missing here. Out of sheer fairness, the editorial might have referred to other headlines recently appearing not only in the Fairbanks daily, but elsewhere in the state: moose, especially young ones, have been dying from a nasty disease that seems to be the cervine equivalent of Ebola or Marburg, a kind of bleeding sickness. It’s apparently very contagious; going by the experience with deer Outside, healthy animals can pick up the disease from the droppings or saliva of sick ones, not just by animal-to-animal contact. Gee. Back there in Ecology 101, some of us learned that predators are useful to prey species because they preferentially kill the sick and weak—not out of any nobility, but simply because energetics is where it’s at; the lazy last longer. When you have too few wolves, you are more likely to find sick moose. Pretty basic. Human hunters, on the other hand, naturally prefer healthy young specimens; people are the worst predators when it comes to the betterment of prey species. Beware the howling indeed. It’s the silence where the howling used to be that should distress moose hunters and wildlife watchers alike. Sincerely,
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