Love will conquer all
I woke up one day recently feeling heavy-hearted about the neo-Nazi gathering downtown.
Like many of us, I wondered about how to respond to such a disturbing movement. Then I walked into our playroom and found my girls and their slumber party friends wrapped in blankets watching morning TV together -- half the sleepover friends African-American, half the friends white -- and as I stood in the doorway watching them all bundled up together like sisters, I felt so grateful.
This is how real change happens. This is how we learn to love each other. This is how we conquer fear of "the other."
This is how we become better people. We live in relationship with each other. If we protect ourselves from folks who are different, whether it is racial or ethnic difference, religious difference, or a difference in our sexual orientation, we are only furthering our ignorance and contributing to a culture of fear and hate.
So, let's all follow in the footsteps of our children and befriend all people -- regardless. Perhaps, loving each other is truly the greatest form of protest.
MARION POUND
Join the service to avoid debt
A recent letter writer asks how college students can live the American dream if they are in debt. I'm glad he asked!
The writer should advise those young, dreamy Americans to contact their nearest military recruiter like I did.
They have jobs, job training, tuition assistance, spiffy color-coordinated outfits, medical care, housing, pension, world travel and anything else a young mind might possibly wish for.
If living the American dream is hampered by debt, we should do something about that $17.5 trillion national debt.
JEFF YOUNG
Botched execution shameful
Let's hope that supporters of capital punishment are covering their heads in shame after the botched events in Oklahoma.
No matter how terrible the crime of this latest victim of state vindictiveness -- and it was horrible, burying a young woman alive -- it is more atrocious for the state to mishandle his execution and then have him die of a heart attack because of the shock his body had to endure.
It is time for candidates for public office to be asked how they stand on such horrific events. Let's be done with such affronts to humanity and Christianity.
LARRY INGLE