What’s the matter with Amherst?
The Bulletin of March 16 contained two articles that raise the above question. One describes care and compassion toward a tree on Mount Pollux and the people who revere its history and have found serenity in its presence (“Town: Tree at Mount Pollux must go”). It spoke of exemplary professionalism of town officials who made necessary decisions but allowed for memorializing the tree as a bench, planting new trees and distributing souvenir pieces of the wood.
The second article describes a dispute between neighbors concerning alleged animal odors from a farm (“Board halts order to shut down farm”). The neighbors who object are either using their seven-year campaign of complaining to change the last farm property in the neighborhood and installing another oversized home with manicured lawn, therefore completely sanitizing the neighborhood, or they never learned to work and play well with others.
I don’t see the problem. When we lived in Vermont, my young children would take great joy in our daily walks to farms in our neighborhood. They loved imitating the chickens and feeding the cows maple leaves while singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
Amherst officials, hardly objective arbiters, have presented Michelle Chandler with a Catch-22 proposition of removing the animals and applying for a permit which they vow never to issue.
So where are we? Dead trees and the people who love them — high priority. Child with hyperdeveloped sense of smell — high priority. Suburban McMansions with manicured lawn — highly desired. Sustenance farming and a single woman with four children whose lives and livelihood centers around it — not so much.
To the neighbors objecting to the farm: You are missing a great opportunity to teach your grandchild respect and appreciation of a vanishing way of life.
To Amherst officials: If there was news of farmers in Columbia or Nicaragua being forced to leave their land, we would send a delegation to visit with a proclamation that we have adopted them.
Let’s be true to our stated values.
“It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice.” —Thomas Jefferson
Linda Cooper
Amherst
