HES a valuable community resource
Since 1910, the Humane Educational Society has served our area. Despite the deplorable conditions of the facility and shoestring budget, the North Highland Park Avenue facility is vibrant and busy. The dedicated and hard-working staff give the animals the love, care and medical attention they need as well as provide outreach education and administrative functions. Tireless volunteers give hundreds of hours each month. People from near and far pass through its doors each day, seeking and finding that special pet to adopt. Visit HES on Facebook and learn more about this amazing place.
Carolyn Galyon
Restore habitats for pollinators
The timing of the "Soiled rotten" story of May 3 is ironic. Lodged between the National Pollinator Strategy's release and National Pollinator Week, we read a landscaper's rant about hollies that are prickly and attract bees. If we considered bees and other pollinators make one of three bites we eat possible, we wouldn't be so disturbed by bees buzzing around. Many people believe natural areas will provide the habitat for bees, birds, butterflies and other pollinators. They couldn't be more wrong. Pristine natural areas have shrunk to an alarming 12 percent of this nation, land fragmented by cities, suburbs and agriculture. Our landscaping practices put natural areas in peril as exotic invasive pest plants like privet and Kudzu crowd out indigenous plants. These exotics didn't show up by accident. We planted them and now see the results: loss of habitat, animal species, and biodiversity which threatens our food supplies as animals that provide free pollination services disappear. Our job is to rebuild habitat we destroyed. We don't own the land. We share it. Please remember that what we do in our yards is like that pebble in the pond - the ripples move well beyond the initial point of impact.
Sally Wencel, Hixson
Change campus double standards
Once again our society's tendency for double standards rears it perplexing head. Go to any college campus such as UTC, UT, Georgia or wherever and you can take a student to lunch, you can buy his/her books, iPad or laptop, you can help him/her with tuition, rent/room and board, or even buy him/her a car unless that friend of yours is an athlete. That is not right. Now in Georgia we read of a state senator in trouble for attempting to help a friend and co-worker of 16 years who is in the court system. Any citizen of Georgia can offer the same help without any consequence, but now this first citizen, because he happens to be a state senator, is in trouble for offering help to a friend. That is a double standard! Whatever is available to any student on campus should be available to an athlete who makes millions of dollars for the school; by the same token, any assistance allowed by a citizen should be allowed by an elected official who is also a citizen. The law is what it is and must be obeyed, but some parts of it need to be changed.
Johnny Parks, Ringgold, Ga.