Hi Barry,
I hope that you get a handle soon of the "nasty bug" which has infested your "Chrome browser" SOON!

I suffer sometimes from wanting to ad my thoughts and opinions to too many situations where my opinion either isn't informed enough or just doesn't relate well. So if I offer a few too many posts or articles to your website, please excuse and go ahead and just don't put them out there.

What has been most frustrating to me, over the years, has been the change in the tone and import of the only major daily paper in your and my county, this community: the SR Press Democrat. To try to compress what I want to say down to a mere two hundred words is the thing that bugs me the most. I've had good letters rejected so many times that I once bored many of my "tennis buds" by calling that paper "the Pressed Democrat." Not funny, not even the first time, I know. Yet emotions are what drive us sometimes. Not practical reality.

What I'm hopeful to continue to be is a sometimes helpful critic. I think that we face a time when, as constituents, taxpayers, voters, and observers, whatever we're called, we get talked DOWN TO by politicos such as whoever it is who plan such public farces as the GOP NATIONAL CONVENTION and the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION. The great majority of us go through our lives, trying to do our best while we're still employed, taking each work day as it comes. As a teacher and as a nurse I relied on co-workers, whether I knew them or not, to help me do my job. It didn't matter to me what party they subscribed to. Whenever I needed a hand, albeit an unruly class of kids or in the hospital help in moving a patient or a bed, my coworker was always happy to help. But politics seems like the forbidden fruit of our lives. Say one word to some folks and they give you that look that says, "Shut up, stupid!"

Each week, at my church, our priest reads off the names of the servicemen and women, heroes, who were killed during the last week in Afghanistan. The names, each of whom are volunteers, make me want to cry. While I know I could be wrong about it, for these mostly young Americans, life is over. Maybe they dreamed of being nurses, doctors, lawyers, ministers. Maybe they hoped to have a family; to settle down in a community. Hoping against all the "red state-blue state" BS to improve their world. Most weeks there are five or six names read. One week, in early July I think it was, there were fifteen or sixteen. Why is it that the Press Democrat cannot even list the names of these servicemen and women who have given their all fighting in a foreign war zone? Do they only care about their profits?

Our two most recent wars begin and never seem to really end, way, way beyond the public's knowledge, much less control. Warfare has become like a computer generated fantasy; they've become more and more impersonal with "soldiers" in anonymous places, hidden from public view, somewhere in the US pushing buttons to "take out" another so-called "enemy." Does anybody know who dies from these so-called "drone strikes?" How about the deaths and injuries to the noncombatants? Those the military call "collateral damage?" Was that term coined to cover someone's hinny in the Pentagon?

The UN was founded after War War II in San Francisco. The hope then was to establish an international body with the power to control war. It seems more and more like the UN has less and less influence the older I get.

My high school American History teacher was a retired colonel who'd served in the US Army much of his adult life. I will never ever forget the last words-the last day of class, He told us two things. The first was, "Wars are very, very expensive!" Secondly, he told us boys about to graduate that, "Don't carry a chip on your shoulder.
The guys that do are the first to get whacked." It was good advice. It is too bad most so-called "leaders" never seem to follow it.

Best wishes and good luck,
tree14