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Letters: Grazing need management Even as a vegetarian and environmentalist, I prefer the open range over ranchette palaces with their requisite llamas. Free range beef is certainly more humane and healthy than drugged-up cattle living in polluting feed lots. Nonetheless, if you can't manage your subsidized cattle on our public lands, please get them off! Recently, I went to check on a rare and beautiful plant population (American Sawwort) that grows on federal land in Cow Creek Glade along the Siskiyou Crest. Cow Creek it is, as the once lovely subalpine wet meadow is now a cow-pie ridden mud wallow. The rare flowers? The only intact plant I found was protected in some alders; the rest were chomped and stomped. What happened to the concept of managed light grazing? Kristi Mergenthaler, Talent Compassion is missing these days "(The Supreme Court) Judges will hear Pledge arguments" was a recent front page news item by the Associated Press. The article talks of the Pledge of Allegiance as being recited by "generations of American school children". I come up with only two generations: my children's and my grandchildren's. When I was in grade school and high school, the phrase "under God" wasn't in there and hadn't been previously. When it was added in 1954 I felt that people were undermining part of my childhood; it bothered me then and it still does. "One nation, indivisible," marks our cohesiveness, but "under God" only emphasizes the religious divisiveness in the United States. The current conservative administration argues that reference to God in the pledge is not about religion but about history and ceremony. We are not, however, remembering our heritage by inserting "under God" in the Pledge. In fact, President Bush shows a remarkable lack of interest in history, as shown by our entrance into Iraq, the mishandling of our economy, his lack of compassion and fairness for our less fortunate citizens. Where is the compassion that was so much in evidence under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman? Dick Trout, Ashland Closing schools makes walking tough A week or so ago you published a lovely photo of a mom walking her daughter to Lincon elementary school. It was leave your car at home day. The words under the photo said how many parents choose to walk this day, but some still drove. What you failed to mention is that last year our school baord choose to close down one of our neighboor elementary schools, therefore making it very, very difficult for quite a few of us parents to contiue the wonderful act of biking or walking to school. How I wish this was still a simple option for me. Our new school is great, that is not the topic of my short note, it just struck me as sad when I read the words under the photo, that leaving the car behind is not nearly as simple for my children and me as last year. Diane Parry, Ashland LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -