GHS Music Space is ThisTight

To the Editor:

Recent comments in the press about the "auditorium project" seem to overshadow the much-needed and overdue renovation of the music classroom space at Greenwich High School, which is a large portion of the cost of the actual project.

At the time the Hillside campus was opened in 1970, there were 46 students in the band program. When my oldest child graduated from GHS in 2000, she was one of 130 students enrolled in band classes. Next year, when my youngest child graduates, he will join 240 of his peers in six different band class offerings.

Similar swells in enrollment have taken place in the other performing arts programs. However, the music classroom space has remained virtually unchanged. Concert band, which this year has over 100 students, meets in a room designed for far fewer. More instrumentalists in a tighter-packed, poorly ventilated, windowless room presents health and safety issues, including increased noise levels, a larger probability of spreading illnesses, and an increased likelihood of accidents due to crowding and a lack of storage space for backpacks and coats.

There are no small practice rooms, a vital necessity especially

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for students of large instruments, which are not easily transported home for practice; and little additional storage space for percussion instruments and sheet music.

The GHS music space/auditorium project as proposed by the Board of Education and ranked No. 18 in the town's Capital Improvement Plan, addresses these needs. New, adequately sized classrooms with natural light, and meeting state and national music education standards are to be built. The day-to-day educational needs of the 950 students who enroll in performing arts courses at GHS yearly should not be overlooked in a town where quality education at all levels is a priority.

Debbie Finkelstein

President

GHS Band Parents Association

Let There be Lights on Greenwich Ave.

To the Editor:

It is just a matter of time before someone is seriously injured, or killed, at one of the Greenwich Avenue intersections. Last fall I was almost hit by a car while crossing in the evening at Arch Street. In January, I almost hit a pedestrian while trying to negotiate my car through the free-for-all at East Elm Street shortly after the police officer left for the day. I am still shaken remembering how close I came to injuring someone.

Greenwich Avenue has changed over the years. It is as busy on Sundays, holidays, and in the evenings as it is during weekdays and Saturdays. The stop signs are not adequate to regulate the heavy flow of vehicular and pedestrian traffic when there are no police officers on duty. Confusion prevails.

The absence of traffic lights on Greenwich Avenue clearly constitutes a threat to our public safety. It is hard to understand how anyone can still question this.

It would be the height of irresponsibility for the RTM to delete from the 2009 budget the $1.5 million for the installation of traffic lights, thereby essentially rejecting a federal transportation grant that would allow us to address a serious public safety issue.

Alma Rutgers

Greenwich

Stanwich Expansion Oversized for Area

To the Editor:

After reading the letter printed in the April 18th edition of Greenwich Citizen from Ms. Amy Bologna - a Stanwich School teacher and Greenwich citizen - I feel compelled once again to point out that those of us who are concerned with the proposed expansion of the school at its current location are not in any way denigrating or disparaging the school itself.

We are concerned only with the massive scale of the expansion, and with the impacts such development will have on the neighborhood; the potentially disastrous impact of the on-site sewage-treatment plant if it fails (and known failures of this system are being investigated by state agencies); traffic congestion and delays, along with traffic safety issues; the impact on the environment, in particular the aquifer(s), the Mianus River Watershed (which provides drinking water for over 130,000 people), the wildlife corridor and the wetlands on the property.

And then there's the issue of the dramatic increase in flooding and erosion being witnessed all over the Greenwich/Cos Cob/Riverside/Old Greenwich area, which town officials acknowledge is due in large part to over-development, clear-cutting and the creation of an imbalanced, excessive amount of impervious surfaces on newly developed properties. Communities all over Connecticut are waking up to the impact these results of overdevelopment are having on vast portions of our state.

This is not in any way a commentary on the quality or spirit of The Stanwich School. There are no objections to the school itself. This is strictly about the impact of their proposal for an over-sized development in a semi-rural neighborhood of single-family homes, and their efforts to circumvent the objections and concerns of town residents and push through the permitting process.

The school will always have the option of expanding, but its expansion plans do not have to be realized on one property in an inappropriate location.

Marcia Heffering

Greenwich

A Corn Flake in Everyone's Gas Tank

To the Editor:

Now that the government has succeeded in putting corn flakes in everyone's gas tank, let's see what really happened.

When you take away the food (34 percent of the U.S. corn production) from the chickens, cows and pigs.... and give it to the ethanol producers, along with a 51 cent per gallon subsidy, ($ 4.5 BILLION paid by U.S. taxpayers), here is what really happens.

First, you have to pick the corn and ship it to the newly built distilling plants to turn it into ethanol. That requires fuel to ship the corn.

The processing of corn to ethanol is called distilling. It requires more than one gallon of oil fuel and 1,700 gallons of water to end up with one gallon of ethanol. Then you have to ship the ethanol by truck, tanker or train since it is too corrosive to go into a pipe line. That uses more fuel.

To grow the corn, each acre required 130 pounds of nitrogen and 55 pounds of phosphorus for fertilizing, which has to be shipped to the farms and spread out, requiring more fuel.

Since there is an unlimited demand for corn, with a floor on the price, a guaranteed profit and no risk, farmers are shifting to grow corn instead of wheat, rice and other grains. With less wheat and rice, it leads to shortages and increases the costs of bread and cereals to consumers and feed to the ranchers and farmers, so the price of beef, pork, chicken, eggs, etc., had to go up. And as everyone knows, it did, leading to inflation and food shortages.

Since ethanol has less energy than gasoline, when you mix it in with the gasoline, you finally get it to the pump and get 30 percent FEWER miles per gallon from the fuel than you could have gotten if they just put the gallon of fuel in your car in the first place, instead of making ethanol.

We are now paying $4 a gallon for diluted gasoline that gives us fewer mpg, at the same time that the government is chiding the auto manufacturers to increase mpg.

In the end, we have succeeded in wasting billions of gallons of water, lowering fuel efficiency of cars, trucks, trains and planes, doubling the cost and creating shortages, of rice, wheat, eggs and meat, while lowering the mpg of our vehicles and creating all sorts of pollution with the extraneous energy utilization.

We would have been better off just eating the corn, drinking the water and using the original fuel in our cars. (If we just ate the corn, we could provide 2,000 calories of carbs EVERY DAY for 104 MILLION people. That is one-third of the U.S. population.)

Then we could rebate the $4.5 billion to all the Americans who paid taxes to pay for the gasoline they use and lower the cost of food as well.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama still support ethanol subsidies. John McCain does not.

In 1912, Ludwig von Mises, an economist in Europe, wrote, "Socialists promise you the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office."

Jerry Simon

Stamford

Deibler Disputes Havemeyer Report

To the Editor:

This is to correct the record regarding the Commission on Aging meeting discussion April 16 about the appropriateness of the Havemeyer building for a senior center.

I have not recently given the Havemeyer building a "once over" and didn't report that I did. I never said it was a white elephant. My comments to the Commission about the interior walls were that we needed a professional review of the building to determine whether it could accommodate the spaces a senior center would require, and I listed challenges like the appropriateness of the current spaces and questions about whether load-bearing walls could be opened. I defined load-bearing walls as those that couldn't be moved without causing the collapse of the floors above.

I reported on the BET Budget Committee meeting the night before and discussed the need to go back to them for funds to do the Havemeyer study. Further, I am not "searching for sites." I reported that we would need to review other sites if the Havemeyer building were not appropriate noting that we would need to review sites that were central, given the results of the study.

The Commission received my report about the next steps, and assumes the need to review the Havemeyer building as its next step.

Samuel E. Deibler, Director

Greenwich Commission on Aging

Buckley Column Captured the Man

The following was sent to reporter Anne W. Semmes. -Ed.

Anne:

Enjoyed your piece on Mr. Buckley ("Remembering William F. Buckley," April 18). He was an extraordinary man, bigger than life. I knew a number of people who had done work for him. I found him to be charming.

I recall one day talking to John Chamberlain, a founding editor at National Review, and asked him what was the visceral issue people had with Mr. Buckley (not related to disagreements over his views), and he said, "I think it is because Bill has money, and knows how to spend it."

It probably had to do with that, as well as his style. I recall a family member seeing him interact in a very informal setting with some of his friends and she said she had revised her opinion of him. She didn't realize from the public persona what an affectionate person he was. He truly had an overpowering personality.

I think one writer had it right, when he noted that all the people who wrote about him didn't talk as much about his work or accomplishments, as they did about the man himself.

I had marginal dealings with him and at various points would drop him a note. I was amazed when one of them ended up in Notes & Asides in National Review.

It was early in Reagan's presidency when everyone was making a fuss that Reagan's speeches to the American people were on a par with FDR's fireside chats. I was tired of the idea that the only way to compliment a Republican was to compare him to a Democrat, and I asked Mr. Buckley how he thought FDR was enjoying his fireside chats now.

Not good theology, but we had some fun with it.

Again, thank you for your wonderful piece. The path of humanity travels by way of the family, which is why it is said that next to helping someone to convert, the next most important thing one can do is to help someone find a good husband or wife. In that regard, your family has a fine feather in its cap by helping bring all those young people together so long ago. How different American history would be without their helping things along in that way.

Greg Byrnes

Greenwich