Netlets for Wednesday, May 21

Walking and Storytelling is what I do, so during Walk and Bike to Work Week I walked to several schools to do storytelling/music assemblies to promoting the Safe Routes to Schools program. Part of the festivities at some of the schools was a drawing to win bicycles, and I'm haunted, in the most positive way, by one of those drawings.

A little boy, whose mom was with him, won a bicycle. It was clear they were struggling economically, as many people are, and they were both overcome with tears of utter joy. The look on both of their faces screamed, "This is the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me."

I've heard talk of providing free bicycles for attendees at the Republican National Convention in September. I think this is a good idea. Even if you don't believe we have an environmental problem, a little less traffic congestion and a little healthy exercise is of value to us all.

What I wonder, though, is what happens to the bicycles when the convention is over. My bid would be to make them available to hundreds of schoolchildren who might never be able to afford a nice bicycle. Multiplying that smile radiating throughout the bodies of the bike winner and his mom might trigger a lot of other amazing things for our community.

LARRY JOHNSON, GOLDEN VALLEY

To the political parties that want to bar or inhibit news reporters, or give tacit approval to local officials who do so ("Political parties to media: Get noses out of our tents," May 15), the ball is really in your court. Do you want to be treated as a secret organization or not? If you do and continue to pretend that you are not answerable to the public at large, or that a partywide firm stand against these practices as any level is not called for, then you can probably expect the "gottcha" efforts to escalate and you still won't solve the problem of verbal missteps showing up on YouTube because those who want that to happen will only get sneakier and more sophisticated than you.

The better approach is to count on what we have today, which is the ability to bounce back with the whole truth -- the whole tape, something, for example, if you are old enough to remember, Ed Muskie was unable to do when Dick Nixon used a whisper campaign to get him off the ticket. In the meantime, voters will eventually get more cynical and more distrusting of the political party process because we're back to the smoke filled rooms without the smoke.

DON BEMAN, CANBY, MINN.; PUBLISHER, CANBY NEWS

The reaction to the Minneapolis School District request for more money ("Minneapolis discussions $60 school levy," May 15) is leaving something left out -- the effects of poverty.

According to the authors of "The Developing Brain," 3 year olds in poverty hear about 3 million words. Similar children in middle-class families are familiar with 6 million words and children in professional families hear 11 million words. In the February issue of Phi Delta Kappa by the end of fourth-grade poor students are two years behind wealthier students and by eighth grade they are 3 years behind.

I was a "big sister" to a 9 year old who didn't know what a mailbox was and didn't know the difference between a river and a lake.

As a former teacher and a Minneapolis resident, I don't relish paying more taxes. But if we don't educate our youth to be able to get good jobs, will we be paying for their adult lives later?

It is deeply troubling that humanitarian aid efforts are being refused by the ruling junta of Myanmar. Though the United Nations has a "responsibility to protect," there are many problems with the idea that the United Nations should invade, or letting the United States do so. Among them is that the United Nations has no standing army and by the time a force fought its way past the Myanmar army it would be too late to provide aid to the survivors.

A long-term answer is to give the United Nations more authority, a standing rapid deployment force and a commitment from member states to allow the U.N. to respond to such disasters. There is great resistance in the United States to the idea of giving the United Nations any authority; like Myanmar, Washington asserts we must protect our sovereignty.

Meanwhile, nongovernmental organizations make valiant efforts to bring in food and see that it is distributed. They are not urging a military invasion. My hope is that we as global citizens can finally put into place official international mechanisms to respond quickly to tragedies -- rather than complain about why things don't work better.

STU ACKMAN, ORONO; CO-PRESIDENT, UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION OF MINNESOTA

Thanks to William Moseley for his wise and well grounded words on current agricultural policy as it relates to Africa and global hunger ("In search of a better revolution," May 14). Our preoccupation with and continuing policy commitment to industrial agriculture with its high input costs, mass mechanization, long-distance transport and petrochemical dependence is not working here in the United States and will not work for Africa. This approach pollutes the land and water, depletes the soil, releases greenhouse gases, depopulates the countryside, and concentrates ownership and control in large multinational corporations.