December 7, 2021
To the Aldermen and Women of the City of Nashua
229 Main Street
Nashua, New Hampshire 00360
Michael & Theresa Viggiano
35 Columbia Avenue
Nashua, New Hampshire 03064
Subject: Support of R-21-202
Iam a student of history, and one of my favorite people from the last century is
Eleanor Roosevelt. She said something compelling.
Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.
What she meant by that was that the great minds who discuss ideas are the
visionaries. The visionaries see, what I call, “the cultural roadmap to our future”.
What will our country look like years from now? This is not because of how history
will judge them, but how history will recognize that what they did was the right
thing to do. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt, on a visit to the Grand Canyon said,
“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve upon it. The ages have been at work on it, and
man can only mar it. What you do is to keep it for your children, your children’s
children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every
American should see.”
He never said, let’s put up 44 houses on the South Rim by the Kaibob Trail.
And Teddy Roosevelt saw a means of preserving the natural wealth of this country
and leaving it in its natural state rather than a land strictly for the economic benefit
of developers and entrepreneurs. He did the right thing, and history has borne that
out.
John Muir, conservationist, responsible for petitioning our government to create
many of our National Parks that we enjoy today, realized that protecting and
preserving these lands for future generations avoided catastrophic destruction of
majestic scenery that, once gone, was gone forever. He also did the right thing, and
history has shown that.
He never said, let’s put up 44 houses next to Old Faithful.
