A life measured by good deeds
The death of Mary Granger is an incalculable loss to our city and state. Having observed her contributions in the past several decades, I don’t hesitate to compare her impact for good to that of Mother Joseph. Community Foundation of Southwest Washington, I Have a Dream Foundation, Women in Action, and Southwest Washington Independent Forward Thrust (SWIFT) were some of the organizations she founded, co-founded, or led over the years. Any one of these efforts would have provided a stellar legacy. Together, they are evidence of a stunning breadth of activism.
Mary Granger had in common with Mother Joseph the unique ability to organize people toward a common goal. She didn’t wait for others to mobilize, and she certainly didn’t wait for the government to do what she and others could do better. Successful people trusted Mary Granger because she possessed one of the best business minds in the region; she didn’t sugarcoat her analysis of what needed to be done and she didn’t waste time.
Perhaps the finest measure of Mary Granger was that she was never in the shadow of her brilliant husband, former County Commissioner Dick Granger, who remains an incomparable force for good in his own right.
Ann T. Donnelly
Vancouver
Baird deserves our gratitude
I first met Congressman Brian Baird years ago when I asked him to help get my son’s personal belongings from the U.S. Army, after waiting 15 years. My son was a 1986 graduate of West Point and was murdered while stationed at Fort Benning, Ga. Baird was able to accomplish this for me.
I again asked Baird for help concerning a hearing I was to attend at the Board of Veterans Appeals in Washington, D.C., after denials from Seattle’s regional office. I sent Baird my medical file and he wrote a letter directly to the board, as Baird was a clinical psychologist before he became a congressman. I won my case with Baird’s help, and to this day, his staff in Vancouver are trying to work with the VA regional office through the congressional liaison for my rightful award payment. I’ve been waiting 48 years for an answer from the VA regional office in Seattle.
Baird fought hard to save the VA Medical Clinic in Vancouver. I’ve volunteered at the clinic for eight years and have witnessed the expansion of care for our veterans there. So this veteran says thank you for Baird’s service as a congressman — and best of everything to him, his family and staff in Vancouver.
Marlin G. Dunlap
Vancouver
Spectacular fishing is in the past
Reading the Nov. 25 Columbian story “A sad milestone: All smelt dipping is banned” about the demise of smelt fishery reminded me of a phenomenon I once experienced as a young boy. Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island had a healthy coho population that returned to a small creek at the end of the bay. There was also rockfish, sea perch, and greenling fishing, and a 6-pound cutthroat caught on my Zebco trout pole hauled behind a rowboat — spectacular. The Wyckoff Co.’s creosote plant (an eventual Superfund site) pretty much kept us from eating flounder or sole. But the smelt that hit those gravelly beaches and then mom’s fry pan were the best.
I had finished fishing off a pier next to the ferry terminal. The moon was up and Mount Rainier was pink in the dusky sunset. I looked out over the glimmering waters of the harbor. Thousands of smelt were passing the pier into the bay and right behind them hundreds of coho. Amazing. Today Eagle Harbor would be better called “Marina Harbor.” The lack of fish is nothing more than diminished returns from diminished habitat. Unfortunately, that won’t change until bureaucrats and builders, not just environmental advocates, choose to be partners in stewardship to find solutions together.
Jim Comrada
Vancouver
Eliminate wage tax cap
What to do about Social Security? Raise the retirement age? Cut benefits? Private savings plans? Or we could assure its solvency for decades with one simple change.
The current Social Security wage base, or “tax cap,” is $106,800, with 6.20 percent paid by employees and 6.20 percent paid by employers. If you earn $10,000 a year, you will pay $620 in Social Security taxes. If you are lucky enough to earn $106,800, the wage base limit for Social Security tax at 6.2 percent, you will pay $6,621.60.
People earning a million dollars in wages will pay the same $6,621.60, which effectively makes their Social Security tax rate drop to 0.66 percent. What a tremendous gift to the wealthiest among us. Eliminating that cap could allow us to double benefits and would keep Social Security solvent for many years to come. Social Security has never been a savings plan, with recipients drawing only what they paid in. Many people will draw far more than they put in; many others will never draw anywhere near what they put in. The great beauty of Social Security is that everyone is entitled to it after they reach retirement age.
We don’t have a Social Security crisis — we have a crisis of imagination.
Debra Di Piazza
Vancouver
We are polluting our own world
Despite many loud voices, American culture is more pagan than Christian. Sad as it is, a rewriting of the national hymn, “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies,” might more accurately read: “Once beautiful, now contrailed skies; Monsanto’s strains of grain; removal of our mountaintops — for Massey Energy’s gain? America! America! How could you let this be? Where hate replaces brotherhood from sea to toxic sea!” Is God supposed to shed grace on that picture?
But it’s not just the corporations that are fouling God’s creation and building up walls of hostility. The U.S. Department of Defense is the worst polluter on the planet via land mines, toxic chemicals, resource destruction, all of which kill for generations after a war ends. Where is the faith in the security that God alone provides when the U.S. taxpayers fund more than 1,000 military bases abroad, which provide no increased feelings of security (i.e., as our weapons grow in magnitude, so grows the possibility of our destruction)?
A nominal faith isn’t something the Bible recommends. God’s words to an apostate Israel (Hosea 1:9b) were these: “You are not my people and I am not your God.” Could you endure such words coming from the One who paints the roadside flower, the One who lights the evening star?
Edie Cotton
Vancouver
The greater threat: cargo containers
Until such time as the cargo containers are inspected at a comparable level that humans are subjected to, the airport security exercises are a farce.
George Young
Vancouver
