In late January or early February, someone pruned my large rosemary plant without my permission. More than two-thirds of the plant was removed! This plant was growing in a brick planter in front of Day Dreamers Bead Store at Kings Boulevard and Buchanan Avenue. I planted the garden and take care of it for the store.

Last fall, I pruned all the other plants in front of the store. I didn't cut back the rosemary because one of the wonderful employees at the store asked me not to cut it yet. She's getting married on May 19 and wanted to use the rosemary branches in her wedding bouquets and table decorations. Now there's not enough left for her to use. Yes, the plant was large and growing over the sides of the planter, but it was not blocking the walkway. I am very upset, and so is the bride-to-be!

If someone wanted some rosemary or had a problem with the plant, he or she could have talked to someone in the store about it. They are open seven days a week. It was mean and rude to assault a plant that doesn't belong to you. It's probably also against the law.

Perpetrator, you should be ashamed of yourself. Please show more respect for other people's property.

Jean Reiher, Corvallis

Burn ban blessing in disguise for farmers

Regarding the March 14 letter, "Medical groups support burn ban":

It seems to me that a ban on field burning could be a serendipitous solution to more than one problem. If farmers pelletized their grass residues rather than burning them, our air would be cleaner, farmers would have another product to sell, and we would have an excellent alternative to burning fossil fuels.

Cornell professor of agriculture Dr. Jerry Cherney has said, "Grass pellets have great potential as a low-tech, small-scale, renewable energy system that can be locally produced, locally processed and locally consumed, while having a positive effect on rural communities."

Cherney found that "… grass pellets can be burned without emissions problems, and they have 96 percent of the BTUs of wood pellets … "

The technology to pelletize grass exists, and it is in use in many places already. Prairie grass pellets are burned in Kansas, straw pellets in Quebec and hay pellets in Denmark.

Biofuel pellets have the potential to displace oil, natural gas and electricity as heating fuel.

Isn't this a win-win solution?

Susan W. Nevin, Corvallis

Danes don't buy that warming hype

Here are a few facts the manmade global warming experts would not like you to learn, found and compiled by the Danish Space Research Institute:

Global warming began before the 1940s (before much of the human-emitted CO2).

Chinese court records state that in 1421 the Chinese sent a naval expedition to the Arctic Ocean. They found no ice. This was the tail end of the medieval warming (warming and cooling cycle).

There's a letter from the president of the Royal Society in London in 1817. It was sent to Admiralty to inform them that the ice had receded. It was now possible to attempt a passage from northern Europe to Japan that was blocked by ice (warming and cooling cycle).

England was warm enough to grow wine grapes during the 12th century (warming and cooling cycle).

Ice cores brought from the Antarctic and Greenland during the 1980s show 300 instances of global warming over the past half-million years (warming and cooling cycles)

Global warming occurs approximately once every 1,500 years.

Earth's temperatures follow solar intensity through centuries of sunspot records. There are cycles of sun-linked isotopes in tree and ice rings. Cloud cover and cosmic rays play vital roles. The result is a 1-2 degree cycle in Earth's temperature.

In fact, ice core samples show that CO2 has the opposite effect of warming, if anything. Ice core samples also show that there has been 10 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere than today without any temperature change!

Robert Gutierrez, Corvallis

Confederate source historically credible

Did Southern Confederates have a unique talent for distorting the truth? It seems that Thomas C. McClintock thinks they did, because he has decided that, since William Gilmore Simms was a Confederate supporter, he "is hardly the most reliable source for determining the truth." (Letters, March 7, "Source on Civil War burning suspect").

According to David Aiken, the editor of the recent reissue of "A City Laid Waste," Simms's eyewitness account, "William Gilmore Simms was an accomplished poet, historian, dramatist and critic, and an experienced journalist. He was one of the 19th century's most popular novelists."

At the time of the burning of Columbia, Simms interviewed extensively Columbia residents and Union troops. He made a careful, detailed, written record of the looting by Union soldiers, their brutality toward women, their mistreatment of former slaves and their destruction of historically important documents and works of art.

Historian Bruce Catton, as quoted by McClintock, says "Sherman did not order Columbia burned." Sherman's soldiers did not need an order; they knew what they were free to do in Columbia. They had been burning homes, farmhouses, shops, barns and public buildings on a routine basis during their notorious march through Georgia.

Columbia was, as Catton wrote, "certain to go up in flames." Why? Sherman's army intended to burn it. They burned Columbia because war propagandists on the Union side filled the minds of their soldiers with the rage-producing idea that secessionists were despicable traitors and thus unworthy of fair and humane treatment.

David R. Prichard, Corvallis

Benton suffers from an 'edifice complex'

Benton County landowners should beware of the "Edifice Complex," where they're likely to run into legal obstacles and general jibber-jabber from the public if they own something big. We have groups determined to maintain the Whiteside's status as the largest derelict theater in the area, and others are mourning the demise of a non-native Sequoia in Philomath, just because it was big.

This is the "Edifice Complex": if it's big, it's sacred. Do yourself a favor and plant trees that don't grow too tall, and if you're tempted to buy a white elephant like the Whiteside, keep your hands in your pockets.

Robert Plamondon, Blodgett