Hello again, dear readers, and welcome back to the monthly letters column. It’s almost summer, which means it’s time to break out the hats, sunscreen and beach umbrellas, because a sunburn is a sign of skin damage. Unfortunately, that damage adds up with each additional sunburn, so please take the time to protect yourself. And now, onward to your letters.
“They were at places that seemed safe — but few spaces in America are guaranteed safe anymore.” This is CNN, doing its best to stay atop America’s mass shootings and keep the survivors (by which I mean us) informed. Yeah, 13 gun massacres this past weekend, at strip malls, nightclubs, graduation parties — with 16 people dying, many more injured — and the total number of such shootings so far in 2022 is 246.
“Elections have consequences,” then-president Barack Obama reminded House Minority Whip Eric Cantor in 2009. Obama was correct.
Glenn Brunkow, Pottawatomie County farmer and rancher How many old westerns have we seen the hero crawling across the desert, desperate to find a drink of water? He turns his canteen upside down and only sand runs out. Or the cattle baron uses unscrupulous methods to gain the water rights of the small ranches.
This placeholder name derives from my own cohort’s moniker— Generation X. Gen X took our name from a novel by Douglas Coupland. We see ourselves as so ironic, jaded and snarky, the only way to name us is to choose a non-name, like Malcom X did. Future genera tions should not be bound by this. Generation Y was quickly renamed Millennials, and now it is time for Gen Z to get a permanent name.
Dear Doctors: Would you please devote a column to shy bladder syndrome? This embarrassing condition is a significant inconvenience to many men. In severe cases, it’s a life-altering disability. I suspect there are more sufferers out there than one would imagine, but shame keeps them quiet.
Witnessing a homeless man or woman pushing a cart with all of their belongings raises a question in a teacher’s heart: could the right teacher at the right time in their early schooling have made a difference in their fate today? Teaching is a compassionate profession. Teaching is not for everyone. Teaching is for those who care. I also told my student
Can my rates be reduced? I pay $24.37 for “Trash/Recycling”, how much of this was for the recycling? The clerk at the payment window told me that the city had been recycling for free and not charging its customers and this is something I can’t verify as I am new to this town, doesn’t seem this can be possible. Can someone provide us a breakdown of this pricing? Now that the recycling has stopped the city no longer has that expense = additional revenue.
Dear Doctors: What happens in macular degeneration? My eye doctor found something called drusen in my eye, and now I’m supposed to take these special vitamins. He didn’t say anything about macular degeneration, but a coworker scared me by saying drusen are the first sign of it.
It’s easy to forget today that agriculture is the foundation of civilization. It’s the process that ended our ceaseless following of food and allowed us to settle into cities. What followed, over the past several millennia is the world we inhabit today. In short, farming and ranching are the essential drivers of the manufacturing- or service-based economy we all enjoy.