LETTERS

Following the pathway

Pathways call out to me. “Come, follow me,” they say, “around a bend, over a hill, across a meadow, beside a lake, through a wood.”

Usually they have no name, although some that might be called trails sometimes do. I take my walking staff in hand and say “surprise me” as I take the offer and follow one into a forest.

There I am mentally transported back in time hundreds, perhaps thousands of years to a time when only footpaths or horse trails connected one village to another. Only silence and the sounds of the forest engulf me.

As I walk I am torn between being grateful for the present and envious of the past where noisy motor cars, trains and airplanes were unheard of.

The forest is a reverent, almost holy place. “In the rustling grass, I hear him pass” says the old hymn. In the rustling trees as well, I think.

Soon, all too soon, I must retrace my steps and return to the present.

As I leave the woods, I pause and turn to look backward, recalling Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” There is no trace of snow here but the woods, like Frost’s, are “lovely, dark and deep.”

With a sigh I turn once again homeward and pray hopefully that there will be other pathways to follow as refreshing as this one.

JOHN McPHERSON

Searcy

Destruction of nation

I believe America’s demise will be the result of the bias and prejudices of the media and the self-centered attitude and ignorance of the lemmings who vote.

PAUL CHRIST

Harrison

Needed a bit of relief

So Barack Obama announced $500 million in new assistance to Tunisia when that money could have assisted needy people in our country.

Then, Jeremy Cramer is only sentenced to life without parole for killing and dismembering his 3-year old son after his wife threatened to leave him and take their toddler.

Gee, it was comic relief to read about Bryan Anderson, the drunk who passed out on the couch in the home he was robbing. Keep it up!

VICKI SPRANZA

Farmington

Accepting the world

I have become increasingly irritated by some of the whining bleats about curling newsprint, as though it were some kind of communicable and dangerous disease instead of a temporal inconvenience. To take seriously the significance of these whining complaints, one would have to have cultivated a hysterical level of super-sensitivity.

I spent several years as staff writer, then publisher at multiple newspapers. From that perspective and background, I think your company and staff do one helluva good job in the face of declining public interest, interference from social speciousness, trivial pursuits and other social dynamics inherent in a current social order addicted to amusement, temporal indulgence and instant gratification.

In late 1997, I happened in a bookstore onto a nonfiction book titled Megatrends by John Naisbitt. The author sensed a direction in America of self-delusion and shallow depth, a trend unlikely to change for a generation or more. After deliberating and reflecting on that, I called in my No. 2 son who was in business with me. I told him that we are not officially for sale, but if we got an inquiry, to not let the inquirer get away. I also told my one investor the direction I thought we should take, and he agreed.

My investor got a nice augmentation to his investment; so did I and my son had a trade that he was subsequently able to successfully market, as well as a nice financial bonus.

I am a lawyer by profession, not a moralist, a deacon or a professor. Readers, like publishers and lawyers, have to take the world as it is, not as they wish it were. Moreover, we all need to analyze our world as it is, not as we wish it were.

BOYCE R. DAVIS

Lincoln

No license to practice

Hello-are lapsed-license doctors looking after you? No; or how about lapsed-license nurses-no. Teachers in the classroom-no; plumbers-no; pharmacists-no.

So why does this group of lapsed-license lawyers apparently feel above the law of their professional-license body? In some jurisdictions one cannot refer to oneself as that profession if your license is lapsed-you then revert to an ordinary citizen. Oh no. Where is my license to drive, do I have one on my car? What if my insurance has lapsed or, heaven forbid, your malpractice insurance?

Now may I ask why a person would vote for someone who has no more respect for the law than to think such a lapse is minor, much less such careless disregard for detail? What if I’m defended by one of these lapsers? When it is revealed, what then?

No license, leave the field. No excuse!

ROBERTA MILLER

Lonoke

Manage our mistakes

As human beings we all make mistakes; we learn to manage our mistakes and we grow from the experience.

However, it seems some of our political candidates go beyond mistakes and enter into the realm of Twilight Zone stupidity. The Missouri Republican candidate that made the statement that basically a woman can use mind control to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. Stupid.

The Georgia Republican candidate stating that you must have a college degree to be smart enough to hold public office. Stupid. I guess he never heard of Harry S. Truman.

Mr. Mark Pryor on national TV smiling and laughing, and I believe, degrading the purity of Rep. Tom Cotton’s military service. Stupid.

It’s disgraceful to degrade in a laughing manner on national TV the purity of anyone’s honorable service to this great country of ours.

Mr. Pryor, I think that was stupid.

We give people second chances for mistakes. Stupidity we can’t fix, but hopefully we can control the damage or harm these politicians can do.

MORRIS POLSTON

Hot Springs Village

Editorial, Pages 91 on 04/13/2014

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