OPINION | LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Still in the pandemic | Heading backwards | It's awfully Pride-ful

Still in the pandemic

Joseph Graham Barsocchi issued a challenge regarding mask-wearing. Here's a non-medical response:

Being vaccinated does not mean that a covid virus coming within six feet of me gets zapped. Indeed, these microscopic bodies plus thousands or millions of other little bodies can enter my body on tiny droplets in the air. They can even prosper there, at least until my immune system recognizes them and mobilizes a defense. If strong enough, the virus is destroyed or weakened so the results are not catastrophic to me. In the meantime I have been exhaling a few of the little bugs everywhere I go; playing with my grandkids, visiting my 99-year-old mother, grocery shopping.

Does it make sense to adopt protective measures during a pandemic? It is still going on, Joseph, so if some folks are willing to continue practices that you don't enjoy, why be so critical instead of thankful that some people are still being mindful of the community's health? In most big groups there will be those whose attitude or demeanor will grate upon our own sensibilities. To enjoy most of the activities in our society there is some cost: expensive tickets or refreshments, loud music, traffic afterward. Wearing a mask? Get over it.

STEVE MARQUESS

Bentonville

Heading backwards

I thought that the late Dr. Martin Luther King and others of the civil rights movement bled and died proclaiming that all people were children of God and made equal in his sight. Sure, some have more pigmentation than others. So what? I will support you 24/7 in proclaiming equality for all.

I've spent the last 50 years trying to look at people and see a man, a woman, or a child; and not a Black man, a white woman, or an Asian child. However, it seems that something has gone terribly wrong in the last couple of years. We seem to be going backwards. In addition, digging up things that happened 100 years ago as though they were yesterday and judging them by today's standards accomplishes nothing. How did we get to the point where a lot of people these days want to gauge even the most trivial things in terms of black and white? Dr. King must be rolling over in his grave!

JOE WHALEN

North Little Rock

It's awfully Pride-ful

Come gay, come all, to wonderful Gayetteville (Fayetteville), have a ball. Where on Mount Sequoya, the large luminous cross is turned into a marquee of pulsating rainbow colors with the large word Pride moving along the horizontal beam. Here gays are sacred above all, and lay under the long arch of the rainbow that begins in New York and ends in San Francisco.

TOM KECK

Springdale

Upcoming Events