Letters: Mail-in voting ‘long overdue’; Being ‘colorblind’ to race is not enough

Mail-in voting ‘long overdue’

Mail-in voting: Safe, secure and easily done. My wife and I applied for and received our mail-in ballots. We filled them out in the safety of our home, signed the back of the form envelope along with our address, and sent them into the county office. We both received confirming emails that our ballots had been received by the county and that they will be counted in the upcoming election. It is a process that is long overdue. There should be no need, in the greatest country in the world, to have to wait in line for up to four hours or longer to cast a vote, that is simply nuts. We will have to wait a little while for the election results, but there again, we won’t have to wait in line for them. So, unless you can’t trust your mail carrier, this process in totally safe and free of any fraud.

Protect the trees

We were disappointed that there wasn’t any followup from the public to the Sue Smith letter to the editor early in May. It was relative to the deforestation that occurred at North Atherton to allow for another development to be built.

Why do we continue to eliminate old mature trees, that according to a recent study will take forever to come back and possibly not at all with our climate change of warmer weather? Those large and older trees have proven to be one of nature’s best carbon controls and the ground they sit on a super sponge providing filtered water to our aquifers. Please join in with groups like the Nittany Valley Environmental Coalition to help prevent the loss of 65 acres of old trees that have existed as Pine Hall Forest. A good number of them have been here before the Centre Region was even developed.

Plans are afoot for a 150-acre Traditional Town Development to take place of Pine Hall Forest and the loss of most of the trees — we can’t let that happen.

Being ‘colorblind’ to race is not enough

For the longest time I prided myself for being “colorblind” when it comes to race, but it dawned on me that it is a wrong thing to do. People with dark skin experience life in this country very differently from those with white skin.

Strange things started to happen after we displayed a “Black Lives Matter” sticker on the back of our car. Random drivers would yell at us, and one sunny Sunday afternoon a passenger in a pickup truck even mooned us. Usually our family is not bothered. This car sticker might just give us a little taste of what life is like here when your skin is brown or black, not white like ours.

At the moment there is a lot of talk about police brutality, and this is an issue that needs to be solved. But we can do something ourselves right now. We have to become aware of the fact that our reaction to a person is influenced by the color of their skin. This ingrained discrimination is at the core of all these problems, and it can only be changed by addressing it.

Let us show respect and kindness regardless of looks. Let’s stand with people in need,. Let’s also engage in conversations with someone who thinks differently. Find common ground, and let differences be an enrichment instead of a reason to fight.

Let’s remind ourselves that Black Lives Matter, everyone knows that white lives do.