D.C. partisan circus
Congress is so divided now that, in my humble opinion, the best thing that could happen to both the members of the Senate and the House is that they would be sent to a retreat center for a month and ordered to undergo conflict-resolution training until they can learn to compromise and begin to run our country in a way that benefits all the people and not just the political parties to which they belong.
The country's infrastructure is crumbling and we are going deeper in debt as they carry on their partisan circuses.
SHARON VANDER ZYL
Cherokee Village
Secure safety, big cats
Lions, tigers, and bears! Some of them are safely and humanely cared for at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge near Eureka Springs. But over 10,000 big cats and bears in the U.S. are not so lucky. They exist in private residences, backyards, and basements. Often malnourished, abused, and cruelly confined, these animals suffer needlessly. They cannot be safe pets, and unregulated captive breeding does nothing to save wild big cats.
Turpentine Creek has been in operation for over 26 years, yet more big cats and bears need rescue than ever before. Not only is this situation untenable for the animals, it's a public safety issue. Currently, only state and local laws regulate ownership, confinement, and breeding of big cats. Some states have no regulations at all regarding these apex predators. My Web search revealed several accounts of escaped lions and tigers threatening Arkansas communities, and I recently learned someone who couldn't care for a "pet" big cat just released it near the Buffalo River. The cat's been captured, but what an irresponsible act.
A solution to these problems--The Big Cat Public Safety Act--rests in the House of Representatives (HR1818) and the Senate (S2990). It must be passed by both chambers then signed by the president by Jan. 3, 2019. Please reach out to Senator Boozman, Senator Cotton, and Congressman Womack and ask them to champion the passage of this critical bill. Email or call your representatives, or go to tinyurl.com/turpcat to send in your comments today.
JAN M. VANSCHUYVER
Fayetteville
That Supreme Court
For the conservatives bemoaning treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, I have just two words--Merrick Garland.
The highest court in our land was allowed to be without a ninth judge for almost a year because Mitch McConnell and his ilk refused to interview much less nominate any candidate proposed by Barack Obama during the last year of his presidency. That delay tactic should have been against constitutional law.
Let's absolutely drain the swamp in November. I've always been a conscientious independent voter, but I'll be doing something I've never done in my life: voting a straight ticket, none of which will have an R next to their names.
LORI MOORE
Bella Vista
Of troubled relations
Residents called her The Princess. Not out of respect, but out of derision. Princess Angeline: last surviving child of a chief of the Duwamish tribe. "The old crone" was another moniker used, and the "ragged remnant of royalty" still another. Some local young toughs liked to torment her by calling her "you old hag" and throwing rocks at her. Within the folds of her ragged dresses she carried her own supply of rocks to hurl back at them. They clinked together as she walked.
No one knew her age for sure; somewhere between 80 and 100 when she died. She certainly looked about as ancient as a human being could look, with wrinkled face, half-closed eyes and mostly toothless mouth. She lived on the shore of Puget Sound in a filthy two-room shack. Sometimes a grandson lived with her. The boy's mother, Angeline's daughter, had hanged herself to escape the regular beatings from her white husband.
Based upon a treaty of 1855, the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes were forced to move across the bay, away from the city. Angeline ignored the treaty and refused to move. She was considered harmless and allowed to stay, eking out a meager living by digging for clams and mussels and selling them door to door. From time to time some church ladies would take pity on her and leave food baskets on her doorstep. Feral dogs sometimes beat her to the food. She died in her shack on May 31, 1896.
In one of the great ironies of the troubled relations between Native Americans and the "late-comers," based on the treaty of 1855 that forbade indigenous peoples from living inside city limits, she had not been allowed to live inside the city that took its name from her father, Chief Seattle.
JOHN A. McPHERSON
Searcy
Who should be afraid
I watched a woman on the weekly AETN show Arkansas Week speak about who's fearful now that Kava-naugh, the elitists and the Republicans got their way with his SCOTUS confirmation and she said it best, which I will badly paraphrase here, but it was something to the effect that those who are the most fearful right now are these old men who have long felt it was their right to access a woman's body and control her. That it's always been their word against that of a mere woman or that she would remain silent.
Men have made women afraid to come forward, and I've rarely met the woman who hasn't suffered some form of abuse at the hand of a man, whether it was emotional, mental, physical or sexual--it was abuse nonetheless.
I've heard that not only is the Democratic base fired up over this confirmation, but the Republican base is as well, but I'm wondering if those riled up the most in both major parties are women.
And if that's the case, be very afraid, old men, because we are angry women and we are powerful and we're just not going to take it anymore.
JUDITH ZITKO
Hot Springs Village
Editorial on 10/09/2018