This is in appreciation for Raymond DiDonato's excellent column “Eastern Mass. is coming for our forests, fields and farmlands” [Recorder, June 26]. Thank you, Raymond, for emerging as an important voice calling for a sane solar siting plan that combats climate change, and at the same time protects the Earth's embattled biodiversity (a kind of unspoken mission at the heart of Wendell's forest protection).

Some of us favor a "hands-off" approach to cutting on all State lands, while others allow for a judicial and sensitive limited harvest of cherished timber as a renewable resource. Some of us use wood for fuel. But almost all of us in Wendell agree that we will do all we can to prevent our forests from becoming a harvest ground in the insane "forever growth" economy, with it's mad dash for western Mass. resources, to fuel an insatiable appetite for "more, more, more." especially prevalent in the eastern techno-megalopolis of The Big Bean and surrounds.

The column is a call to all of us to wake up and appreciate the precious lands we are called to protect, before they are all burned up in the human lust for uncontrolled growth, a malignancy that threatens to eat up the planet, all of its wild things, and us along with it. Protecting the globe is everybody's business. It is our responsibility here in Wendell, and everywhere else in our western Mass. home.

Court Dorsey

Wendell