Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor:

Since moving to Iowa nearly 40 years ago, I have discovered so many things I appreciate about living here. Affordable housing. The quality public education my three children received. Uncrowded roadways. Low crime rate. And, of course, Hawkeyes football, basketball, and wrestling.

One thing I don’t appreciate is the annual assault of pollen allergies I had never suffered before making Iowa my home. The sneezing. The itching eyes. The runny nose. In a word, the “misery” I share with about a half million fellow Iowans.

Now, thanks to Climate Change, our misery is rapidly becoming worse. Here’s how.

First, the warming of the planet is extending allergy season, meaning Iowans, like most other Americans, are experiencing more days of pollen exposure. About 20 more days than we experienced in 1990. This alone is bad enough news, but there’s more.

The same increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration that is driving global warming is also boosting plant growth. This means more pollen in our noses, eyes, and lungs. And with it, more suffering.

As a quick aside, this boost in plant growth is not good news for the plants we eat. Why? Because accelerated growth yields less nutritious crops that will require us to eat more – and presumably spend more - to gain the same nutritional benefits.

Of course, Iowa farmers – many of whom also share my pollen-caused misery – regard the increasingly intense droughts and floods climate change is causing to be of far greater concern. After all, allergy sufferers can buy a bottle of pills to mitigate their symptoms. No such pill exists to off-set the great hardships, including enormous financial losses, global warming is visiting on farming families.

For them, the impacts of climate change definitely are nothing to sneeze at.

Jonas Magram

Fairfield

Grooming children

Dear Editor:

Iowa is fortunate to have Governor Reynolds and legislators that care deeply about children and their education.

Read pg. 6 Friday 4/1 this print.

New bills working their way though the process focus on parental rights to monitor their child’s education.

If they don’t approve, parents should be able to take their student from a government school to a private school with some public funding following the student.

One goal is for teachers to publicly post their classroom syllabus/curriculum on line so parents can know if their student is being exposed to any inappropriate material.

A national trend has teachers becoming involved with students in gender identity, dysphoria, orientation and other sexually explicit matters.

Florida recently passed a law prohibiting teachers from discussing these issues with students K-3rd grade.

One Kindergarten teacher says he can’t productively educate his students if he can’t discuss with them his love life with his male partner.

A fourth grade teacher in Austin Texas says 20 of her 32 students identify as LBGTQ.

Joe Biden chastised states that still hold traditional values for men and women and the DOJ warned them they can’t deny gender affirming care.

The Senate confirmed the next Supreme Court justice, nominated by Biden to be the first black woman on the court, and she can’t define ‘woman’ because she is not a biologist.

March is Women’s History and on the 31st, Biden issued the first presidential proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility.

That’s infringement on honoring women who have selflessly given life since creation along with centuries of countless accomplishments.

The Department of Health and Human Services raised the trans flag honoring one small group, mocking all others and disrespecting public property.

Seattle Museum of Pop Culture offers a ‘camp for art of drag’ to teach boys age 12+ to be drag queens.

Stitchbug Studio knits prosthetic penises for little girls to wear in their panties to alleviate gender dysphoria.

Sussex UK offers family doctors 178 Euro ($195) to prescribe hormone therapy and 91 Euro ($99) for annual checkup.

Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill approves the war in Ukraine so Russia won’t have pride parades like the west.

Pretend and experiment all you want, but the sex determining chromosomes contributed by the biological mother and father cannot be switched.

Aside from all that, only a teaching certificate and membership in the largest union in the country does not a quality educator make.

Leland Graber

Wayland

Open letter to Elon Musk

Dear Elon Musk,

I’m Brad Fregger and I was contemplating about the importance of becoming a spacefaring race before you were born.

Recently I published a Humanity’s Future trilogy:

Book One, Sky Is Falling Theories, With a Focus on Anthropogenic Global Warming, discusses barriers to humanity becoming a spacefaring race.

Book Two: The Influence of Images of the Future on Current Socioeconomic Health, presents the thesis that powerful, positive, images of the future are critical to achieving this goal.

Book Three: Venturing Beyond Earth, strongly suggests that the human race is probably the only technological species in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Sooner or later we will experience either a Civilization-Ending Event (CEE) or, even worse, an Extinction-Level Event (ELE). It is critical that the human species survives, but this cannot happen until we learn how to form successful exo-terra sustainable cultures with populations of at least 100,000 (probably a million) or more.

In my opinion you have missed the mark in a couple of critical areas.

First, if humanity is to embrace this crucial objective we must live and breathe the vision to the depth of our being, wanting to be a part of making it happen.

Second, the Mars venture isn’t the powerful vision needed to convince 10s of millions of people that this is humanity’s future. In addition it has problems that make it hard to accept. The gravity is a major one; its gravity is only 0.37 that of the Earth’s. This means that any person living on Mars for an extended period of time (especially someone born there) will not be able to return to Earth without major technological aid.

We need to be considering, right now, the importance of space colonies with gravities equal to Earth’s. Exo-terra sustainable space colonies with populations of a million or more where the populations of Earth and the colonies will not be distinct and separate from each other.

This vision for humanity will potentially enthuse millions who will want to play a role in its creation, and to ultimately explore beyond the solar system; becoming a true spacefaring race.

A great help to achieving this goal would be the creation of a university program, from undergraduate through PhD, that is focused on the research and creation of exo-terra sustainable cultures. The Maharishi International University is already heavily focused on sustainability. The faculty and administration are very concerned about humanity’s impact on the environment and this includes the environment of outer space. However, I am sure that they can be shown that this effort will provide a model for a sustainable future for Earth as well.

With your influence and financial help we could easily turn this university into the world’s academic, research, and vision center for the research and development of exo-terra sustainable cultures; helping, ultimately, to create a spacefaring race that is seeding the galaxy.

This version was edited for length. For the video of this open letter, go to: www.fregger.com/ElonMuskOpenLetter.html.

Brad Fregger

Fairfield