Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 69 Editor's Choice: 12
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Global fishiness...salmon is the tip of the iceberg
[Read the article: Global fishiness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think anyone compelled to read this article is also aware of how Wal-Mart leading this country and others into an economic despair. The quest for low prices has nothing to do with serving Americans or producers, that's for sure. It's about the rape of poor countries and the exporting of jobs so that a few profit immensely.
This is not capitalism; this is facism.
I will take the statement of my 80 year old father as a dark reminder of who we have become as consumers:
"Don't blame Wal-Mart. Blame the American people. Wal-Mart could not continue without our consent. We are as complicit in the undoping of our communities as Wal-Mart. Quit shopping there, for anything. Just stop."
We are victims of our own greed.
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longing for meaning
[Read the article: Hoe, hoe, hoe]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I applaude GK's thoughts on today. I can't vouche for the accuracy of hoeing potatoes, but I can recall working with my grandfather keeping hundreds of tomoato plants in perfect condition for hours on end. I hated that work, but I loved my grandfather more than life itself.
I watched my father work as a merchant in a small upstate town for 51 years. His store was a icon of well-being in our little town. He worked long twelve hour days six days a week. Never did I see him slouched in his chair, paper in his lap sleeping in exhaustion. I did see my uncle, a corproate leader sleeping at the dinner table on Sundays, my aunt nudging him unforgivingly in his self imposed exhile from humanity.
I find my wife waking me every night from my chair, the one I collapse in every night from mental exhaustion unable to even read the paper before crashing. Ah, yes, the good 30 years of company service I put in!
I have planted tweleve tomato plants out back, where a large farm field butts up to my yard. The rich aroma of the vine fills my nose with more than memory, there is understanding in those vines. A sense of belonging to something more alive than the artificial world we have created.
And my dad? He's 80 now and still fills his day with the joy of work, not the old store, but still a joy in simple accomplishment that has meaning in the art of Being. If I am lucky enough to have him with us next year, maybe we'll plant a hundred tomato plants together. Maybe we'll go to have a cup of bottomless coffee he so much enjoys (I'll take a vente mug of dark roast at Starbucks, thank you).
Thank you GK. We've lost the art of living and work having meaning and a simple end. If you need help hoeing, call me.
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ahhh...you reach the souls of tattered men
[Read the article: The confrontational columnist]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Once again, you've connected the jumper cables to me. Had to laugh, at 53 sitting in a bar with my wife and a few of her lady friends, a young buck comes up to hit on one of them. These are ladies learned in ways of the world and handling themselves in such situations. I ignored the man and continued my conversation.
The next thing I know, he is insulting one of the ladies an she is crying. I slap my hand on the bar, rise from my stool to somewhere between his navel and chin and demand he and I settle this matter for her honor. He is amused, but I am in that one too many frame of mind where all is cloaked in a comfortable haze, and I challenge him again. His arms are the size of my thighs. I berate, blow the proverbial cigar smoke in his face and indicate he might be less than manly in every possible way. He backs down.
Alcohol and bravado racing through my veins, I puff up my 5'4" frame and continue my verbal assault with threats of physical harm if he so much as looks at the kind lady again. He head is screaming for me to shut up, the rest of me continues to press forward to save her honor or redeem what really may be my own lost honor for not living life as I had planned.
My wife has be by the collar and pulls me from the bar, prbably saving my life, as I shake my fist and let him know I'lll be back.
Living on the edge has it's advantages. Light a Macanudo and gie it a go.
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the idea is good but not deep enough
[Read the article: What they went through]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a grizzly idea to listen to the dying laments of innocent civilians. Maybe it isn't enough. Americans, for the most part, are sheltered from the horrors of war. This idea can be, as one writer said, a "remember the Alamo!" sort of cry inciting more hate, but there is good to come of it. If all citizens of the world were forced to see and hear the real atrocities of war possibly we might find our stomachs turned and our minds open to solutions other than destruction. My 80 year old dad was a death camp liberator. It was a sobering sight for the German people to be marched through the camps to witness the negative power of the Nazi regime. Maybe we all need a dose of this reality.
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Bush/Cheney
[Read the article: America eats its young]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No need to wish for a magical snatching of goodies from those with Bush/Cheney stickers. The bums have struck at all with impunity...well...that is if you've never had a bank account in the seven figure range. The deed is done.
and this: "Hmong kids?!" "African American kids who think scholarship is white bread?!" Are you KIDDING me??! Please tell me what on Earth leads a thinking person to write these thoughts as if they are perfectly acceptable
What's with this nonsense...I mean I think I get you but as a man with the knowledge of the power of words you should strike this trash from the record!