Letters: Campaign messages; WPSU needs your support

Campaign messages

Donald Trump has asked that his gag order be removed so that he can campaign for the presidency by demeaning others. With the goal of informing voters, political candidates should stress their strengths when campaigning, rather than trashing their opponents.

WPSU needs your support

When I pulled into State College in 2017, I changed my radio tuner from 90.5 to 91.5 — from KUT in Austin — to WPSU. I moved my sustaining membership as well because the value of the content is so important to me.

WPSU-TV serves a very large rural area in central Pennsylvania with programming and services of the highest quality. A small but mighty staff produces local stories that matter to all of us.

As the region’s largest classroom, WPSU-TV is available to all children — including those who can’t attend preschool — and offers educational media that help prepare children for success. During the COVID pandemic WPSU-TV shifted all daytime programming to support students and provide teachers with resources.

WPSU offers programming for a wide range of ages, interests and genres. Each month, thousands of people explore the worlds of science, history, music, and more through WPSU’s trusted content.

Every station ID broadcast by WPSU includes the Penn State shield and/or the statement that they are “an outreach service of Penn State,” closely tying the university to its highly-valued and indispensable public broadcasting benefit that PSU provides to its central Pa. neighbors.

WPSU has been targeted for a substantial cut in funding from the university. Please consider becoming a member to ensure continued access to the programming that truly makes a difference in all our lives. Also, let the Penn State Board of Trustees and the administration know how valuable public media and WPSU is to you.

Seeing climate change up close

I spent the years between 2007 and 2017 in Honduras as a missionary teacher with the Episcopal Church. There I saw the ravages of climate change up close. The beach where we used to swim and eat fresh-caught seafood disappeared under the rising waters of the Caribbean. The farmers to the east of the Pacific Coast mountain range lost their crops to drought two years in a row, and to flood and landslides the year after. Farmers and fishermen left by the thousands for the treacherous trek up to the U.S. border, because they could no longer feed themselves, let alone their families.

Honduras, one of the most backward countries of the Americas, has very little to do with causing climate change, and yet they are among the world’s most affected by what we have done to pollute the atmosphere and cause it. And we all know what this tide of climate refugees has done to destabilize life along our Southern border.

And are we going to leave our kids and our grandkids to deal with all of this? Not if this angry grandma has anything to do with it! We need to reduce and eliminate the use and production of fossil fuels right now!

Aids to the steady the news

President Obama noted the totalization of the news cycle as a cause for concern.

Let us place this cycle by recalling the abiding calm of this land we so often drive through without seeing. The land supports us in our fevers and can quiet them. The shining sky above is its companion.

To be sure as well we can place the news cycle traditionally recalling the great goodness behind the world.

For without these aids to the steady the news, it may fall to one anxious calamity after another without end and this paralyzes the moral will insinuating that these events measure us rather than we in ethical independence measuring them.