Letters to the editor for May 31
Restart library services
Timberland Regional libraries can safely implement a pickup system in which library users pick up materials that they have placed on hold.
Barnes & Noble bookstores offer curbside pickup in some states (not locally). With B&N pickup, after paying for a purchase online, customers arrive at their store and make a cell phone call to an employee. An employee then comes outside and delivers the book to the customer in their car.
With library pickup, patrons do not need to call first or wait in their cars for a book to be handed them. A walk-up system can be developed like we see in some of the large stores that have remained open.
The bugs can be worked out by testing this at library branches with small circulation. If having enough personnel is a problem, volunteers can be found to help.
Jerry R. Fallenberg, Lacey
How is COVID-19 affecting the Nisqually Jail inmates?
Since the Public Records Act doesn’t apply to sovereign nations, how can we know the COVID-19 situation in the Nisqually Jail? Many cities in Washington contract with Nisqually to house municipal defendants and convicted persons. Are these people safe? Do Supreme Court orders and executive proclamations protect them?
Food for thought.
Jackson Millikan, Olympia
Comparing distress
The death toll from COVID-19 in this country passed 60,000 in the first four months of this year. (It has since surpassed 100,000 on Wednesday.) Understandably, this has caused enough fear that people have willingly changed their lifestyles and accepted an economic shutdown.
But where is the reaction to the hundreds of thousands of babies who have lost their lives through abortion in the same period? Few people seem to care. Most believe that “a woman has a right to her own body.” Of course! Absolutely! But what gives anyone the right to decide life or death issues for someone else?
Some people insist that an early pregnancy has nothing to do with a child. “It’s just a fetus, a mass of tissue.” Any dictionary will tell you that a fetus is the early development stage of a child. I know only two things that change their nature while developing: a polliwog and a caterpillar. The briefest of research showed that even these do not change genetically while developing. Their DNA remains the same; their genes are only rearranged.
I believe that fetus is a baby from the moment of conception. It is not a part of the mother. It has its own DNA and its own blood type, frequently different from its mother’s. How can we deny this future child its future? Its life? Every child deserves the right to a life of amazing contribution to the world. What have we all lost by denying that right?
Stacie Larson, Olympia