Column on the mark
I don't always agree with Philip Martin's reviews and comments, but his column in the Dec. 4 issue is on the mark concerning the evils of banning the use of cannabis. Like Martin, although much older, I am not a user, although I once took a drag when a renter insisted that by my being such a good landlord I deserved it. Honestly, I was not impressed. Beer was sufficient for me and, by buying anything illegal, I would have risked a lot as an educator.
My renter eventually lost her license as a practical nurse.
As a history major in college, I learned the evils created by prohibition of alcohol in the '20s. It not only caused the death of thousands of users of tainted homemade booze, but it also helped create the Mafia of those years.
Martin correctly compares the two. We have spent millions in this nation on obliterating the growing and use of a product of Mother Nature (albeit with its own harms from abuse), when man-made hard drugs are just as prevalent and much more harmful. (I add that a similar comparison can be made with returning to illegal abortion as many ultra-right politicians and moralists argue.)
As an educator of 47 years, I believe Martin's column presented facts, not opinions, and definitely not fake news.
JOHN W. "DOC" CRAWFORD
Arkadelphia
What do we say now?
Ho, ho, ho, merry--ugh-- day?
Our Christmas hymns are sung with a change of words. Something more suitable, but maybe we can rhyme "day" with "hay" or "say." That person born in a barn is just another kid.
So have a merry day. Celebrate with a joint. Get a day off from work.
Merry, merry!
CLARA FISHER FIELDS
Bentonville
Need a better future
I can remember when there were at least seven factories in Little Rock and surrounding cities, even more: watches, textiles, meat, and lighting factories.
Disposables are always going to be needed here and everywhere; that's why I am so appalled at the closing of Kimberly-Clark. And why is that factories always choose the Christmas season to close down? Timex did the same thing when I worked there in 1965, but they came back--for a while.
I hope Kimberly-Clark is not being sent to Mexico, India or Taiwan. We need jobs like these that will pay everyone a living wage, besides the tech industry and government jobs. We do not need jobs in casinos because if the public wasn't throwing its money away, no one would get paid.
Bringing in more useful paying jobs maybe would stop some of the gun violence in our communities. People need to have hope for a better future.
DORIS LOMACK
Little Rock
Unscrupulous affair
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Education set up a seemingly wonderful program. This is where teachers can obtain grants to further their education, graduate or undergraduate, if they agree to teach in a low-income district for a given number of years and produce documentation of such from their principal or superintendent. Unfortunately, this plan has backfired.
As a teacher, I am impressed with such a program. My colleagues have been had. One colleague in Tennessee had her grants turn into loans, and she could not pay. She and her husband had to sell their home. Other colleagues elsewhere have accumulated loan debts they couldn't pay while working in a school paying substandard wages.
It is bad enough that those of us in education should have to worry about school shootings, an infantile NRA, and now be cheated by unscrupulous bureaucrats.
LESLIE PUTMAN
El Dorado
Memory for the ages
For those of us fortunate enough to have families to share experiences, most have enough holiday memories to warm us all year long. But for the family of mankind around the world, in modern times one memory should stand out for all who were living at the time.
Fifty years ago, in late December 1968, Apollo 8 was in orbit around the moon. Using President Reagan's words some years later, it contained some of the first people to ever slip the surly bonds of Earth. No threesome had ever been more alone, tethered to Earth only by their radio and the good wishes of those left behind. On Christmas Eve in their tiny spaceship, Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell read the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis.
You don't have to be religious to appreciate the near-poetry of the reading, nor could anyone hearing it live, as I did, ignore the context. Here were three humans, farther from Earth than anyone ever before, looking at their little blue ball of a home and relating a beautiful, lyrical story of how it came to be. "And God said, Let the waters under heaven be gathered unto one place and let the dry land appear; and it was so." That, interspersed with white clouds, is what our astronauts saw.
Their experience and their spectacular photograph of earthrise over the moon, both shared with millions back on Earth, gave us all new perspective.
From 240,000 miles away, people don't exist. Nor do cities, or national borders, or anything else constructed by humans. Just this little blue ball hanging in the midst of the endless celestial background, a fact that should be both humbling and inspirational to us all. A holiday memory for the ages for all humanity.
DENNIS BARRY
Little Rock
Births at St. Vincent
Thank you, St. Vincent Little Rock birth programs. All three of my children were born at your Little Rock hospital; two at St. Vincent and one at the Doctor's Building under your birth program. Everyone was so nice and helped us so much.
Hate to see you close again this wonderful, loving program. Thanks again.
JEANNIE SMITH
North Little Rock
Editorial on 12/16/2018