Do manners matter?
As Mike Masterson wrote in his opinion column recently about the demise of manners, I was thinking. Mama always said: "Son, mind your manners and always be nice," so I try to do just that. She also said: "Get a dog going downhill and everyone kicks at him," and I think she was right about that. She also said: "Cheaters never win"; she could be wrong about that. Daddy taught me manners also. During Roosevelt's New Deal, he was the only registered Republican in our county. He has been gone a long time now, but I think in the next election, he deserves a mail-in ballot.
So as Mike said in his column, manners don't seem to mean anything anymore. I mind my manners and try to adjust to changes that have occurred over time. For example, now someone can decide to identify as the opposite sex and proceed through life in the new gender. At 89, I don't want to change my sex, but I was thinking about changing my race.
I didn't know until a recent Supreme Court ruling that I was born on an Indian reservation. In the small town of 420 where I grew up, everyone was either Scotch-Irish, Indian, or Scotch-Irish-Part Indian. Anyway, Senator Warren was born in Oklahoma and it seems used her high cheekbones as a qualification to be an Indian. Since I was born on the Muskogee-Creek Reservation, I want to be a full-blood Creek. They have a lot more money now, and they spend it for the benefit of the community, mind their manners, treat everyone with respect, and walk kindly upon Earth, and that's a good thing. While I hesitate to give up Scotch-Irish-Part Indian, I am ready for the change.
DONAL B. WRIGHT
Cabot
Thanks for my shots
I am 72 years old and I just received my second dose of the covid-19 vaccine. I want to thank former President Trump, his covid-19 task force, the pharmaceutical companies, the logistical/transportation companies, and the Baptist Health Medical Center-Conway staff for making this possible. Without their focus and drive, this would not have been possible in such a short time.
GARY LAMKIN
Little Rock
Believing in Big Lie
Watching our Arkansas Legislature meet can be a painful exercise. Especially when you see the unknowing and uncaring wading ignorantly into the election laws of our state with unnecessary and suppressive voter efforts. Do any of these people watch the news? Do they not grasp the fact that the Big Trump Lie of Voter Fraud was a lie? It was a conspiracy as verified by 50 state governors, secretaries of state, state election commissions and the attorney general of the United States, who affirmed that widespread voter fraud did not exist except in paranoid minds.
Even after the lie was disproved, we have some in the state and in the federal legislative branches who are clinging to it. They say, "Well, a lot of people have questions about the integrity of our elections." Duh! They have questions because they were lied to so many times that they began to believe the lie.
The lie that caused the insurrection resulting in death, injury and mayhem in our nation's Capitol lives on in some quarters. After the Arkansas law that caused absentee ballots from registered voters to be thrown in the dumpster was amended to allow shut-ins and others without a copying machine or a driver's license to be included in their absentee ballot envelope to have their vote counted, now comes a legislator who sees fit to undo the correction and once again place registered voters with an unwarranted burden that will cost them their vote. Cruelty or spite is the only reason for such meddling in election laws.
I hope that someone with good and common sense heads this nonsense off. Perhaps someone in the executive branch or someone in the judiciary can rein in legislation that is not needed, and not wanted by the people who actually have a working knowledge of elections and how they should be conducted. Blindly following a disproven conspiracy that has rocked the very foundation of our democracy is not a good thing.
HARVEY JOE SANNER
Des Arc
Selfish, inconsiderate
I am 100 percent in agreement with Mr. Richard Mason. Litter is a blight upon our state. I have long believed there is not a more selfish, inconsiderate choice an individual can make than to throw trash from their vehicle onto a roadway.
I drive a truck to work every day, and tend to generate a lot of trash, which I throw over in the passenger floorboard. When it gets level with the seat (or my wife's shaming gets to be too much), I clean it out and deposit in the trash can for Waste Management to pick up. That's what I do with my trash. I don't dump my can into my neighbor's yard for him to deal with.
At heart, this is a morality problem, or folks just not being raised right. My folks never specifically told me not to litter, but did teach me right and wrong, personal accountability, etc. Integrity is another word that comes to mind. Anyone who would throw their trash out on the road for others to look at and deal with is lacking in it. Shameful is another adjective for you litterers. And as much as I believe legislating morality never works, in this case I agree that the state needs to try harder to do just that, because this problem has plagued Arkansas forever.
Uh-oh ... I have exposed myself as an ... anti-Littite! Maybe I won't get canceled.
GREG STANFORD
White Hall
Wages of not thinking
Not only will mental laziness cause you to make some really dumb, life- altering decisions, it might also help make you fat.
According to scientists, while our brains account for only about 2 percent of our body weight, they consume about 20 percent of our caloric intake. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that those calories not consumed by exercising our brains are available to be stored as body fat.
If true, then 74 million American voters and 43 U.S. senators need to watch their diets ... very carefully.
DAVID L. HENDERSON
Hot Springs Village
Missing my president
Do you miss President Trump yet?
FLOYD HOPSON
Hazen