Helping kids flourish
As a former classroom educator and Bread for the World activist, I have seen firsthand how many kids lack access to food during the summer months. In Arkansas alone, 26 percent of kids under age 18 live in poverty. Teachers and school employees see the effect this has in classrooms, where a student's potential is often not reached because they simply don't have access to food.
That is why I am thankful for U.S. Sen. John Boozman's leadership in passing legislation that enables low-income children to access nutritious foods during the summer. Teachers are often on the front lines of working with children in poverty, and we know that access to nutritious food leads to better health, educational and economic outcomes.
Educators understand that access to food and America's nutrition crisis can't be solved with one piece of legislation, but this will have immediate impacts for children across Arkansas and the United States.
Thank you, Senator Boozman, for leading this important effort to help families and children flourish.
KANESHA BARNES
Pine Bluff
Kanesha Barnes is CEO and founder of Bearapy Bookshelf.
Bring Travelers back
They were talking about moving the Arkansas Travelers to Benton or Conway. Why not back to Little Rock where they belong? Would be nice to bring it to War Memorial Park. We have an abandoned golf course that's just sitting there. Lots and lots of room for a ballfield, and plenty of parking. Won't have to worry about a ballplayer disappearing in a sinkhole. Might have to supply the outfielders with ladders so they can climb out.
Travs, come back. Mother likes you, come back, Travs ...
BOB MASSERY
Little Rock
The universal love
Another gem from my ancestor, Pastor C.H. Spurgeon: "Behold, Christianity is the Magna Carta of the universe. Here is the true 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity' which men will seek for in vain in politics; here is the sacred communism which will injure no man's rights, but will respect every man's griefs and succor every man's needs; here is, indeed, the birth principle of the golden age of peace and joy, when the lion shall eat straw like the ox and the weaned child shall play on the cockatrice's den. Spread it, then, and let it circulate throughout the whole Earth--God's love first, our love to him next, and then the universal love which shuts not out a man of any color, of any class, or of any name, but calls upon itself to love both God and man, because God is loved."
B.E. SPURGEON
North Little Rock
Must slow down evil
I am amazed as to the wisdom our founding fathers had because of what they said and did that rings true today. Such as John Adams on the subject of virtue: He famously predicted that "human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
It seems our nation is no longer a religious nation. It has gone post-truth to evil. We see it everywhere--in everything. Only by our dedicated return to God can our nation survive.
Guns cannot do it; more money cannot do it; more luxury cannot do it; more education outside God's word cannot do it; individually or as a dedicated organization we cannot do it; a political party cannot do it. Returning to morality has a chance to slow evil down. I believe only a nation dedicated in humility under our creator, who put this nation together, can do it.
Are we praying? Are we getting on our knees before God asking for our forgiveness for allowing God's freedom under his precepts and principles to slip away? If not, we surely will reap the whirlwind of evil, and the evil winds will be heartbreaking.
Working to try to make a difference was expensive and time-consuming for my family. I thought I was working to save a good nation for my posterity. However, with evil rapidly changing, I may still be alive to see USA fall under dictatorship. This year may begin to tell us what our nation's future will look like.
JOHN J. EMMONS
Hot Springs Village