Letters | Great story on jazz

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Great story on jazz

The Ainslee Mac Naughton article about the Longmont Jazz Association and its annual festival (Buzz, July 18) is absolutely the best piece I have read in my 13 years as a board member of that organization.

Ainslee took time to listen to and to include quotes from board member Jerry Maddock and musicians Max Wagner and Bill Wilkinson, whose comments were spot on. Our mission is to increase interest and participation in jazz music and to support those individuals who devote their lives to this music, often with little recognition. We are proud of our annual free festival and thankful that BW and other outlets have provided great coverage this year. Jazz lives!

Bill Fairchild, treasurer, Longmont Jazz Association/Longmont

Congrats to gays

(Re: “One step closer,” Dodge’s Bullets, May 2.) Not being gay, I guess I’ve always kind of thought, “Gee, I’ve got no dog in this fight.” But I do detest obvious injustice, and the more one looks at the issue as a matter of political justice and human dignity, then one has no choice but to respect the gay struggle as such. So congratulations to the gay community on their securing the right to marry.

That it drives the Right so absolutely crazy still gives me that ol’ Center Leftist college kick too, though, I must admit.

However, we should not, and I will not, let this ruling overshadow the tragedy this same court has done to minorities in gutting a central component of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. No one’s going back to the 1860s, thank you very much.

Grant Cyrus/Boulder

Vegan diet and the flu

The flu epidemic invaded 48 states, overwhelming medical facilities, exhausting vaccine supplies and killing 29 children and thousands of seniors. The problem and solution to this disaster hinge on how we relate to animals raised for food.

Indeed, 61 percent of the 1,415 pathogens known to infect humans originate with animals. The more recent, contagious and deadly viruses among these include Asian, dengue fever, Ebola, H5N1 (bird), HIV, SARS, West Nile and yellow fever. The pandemic “Spanish” flu of 1918 killed 20 million to 50 million people worldwide, and the World Health Organization predicts more pandemics in the future.

Today’s factory farms are virtual flu factories. Sick, crowded, highly stressed animals in contact with contaminated feces and urine provide ideal incubation media for viruses. As these microbes reach humans, they mutate to defeat the new host’s immune system, then propagate by contact.

Each of us can help end animal farming and build up our own immune system against the flu by replacing animal products in our diet with vegetables, fruits and whole grains. These foods don’t carry flu viruses, or government warning labels, are touted by every major health advocacy organization, and were the recommended fare in the Garden of Eden.

Stanley Silver/Boulder