Opinion

To the editor:

The opening of the 2010 Winter Olympics – what wonderful timing for our extra frigid weather this year. As if the gods on Olympus knew we were all suffering from the doldrums of the season, they blessed us with the thrills and chills of the world’s best athletes. 

The political agenda is left behind and competitors and fans alike from all nations embrace the warmth that takes away the chill of war and the strife of everyday life. 

To the editor:

2010 is an election year for many city, county and state offices. Many candidates have filed to run against incumbents.

I would like to issue a challenge to all parties seeking election to run clean campaigns.

In some elections, candidates use fault-finding, mud-slinging tactics, even lawsuits in a desperate attempt to get votes. Voters in Oldham County are weary of this type of politics.

A candidate should promote his or her qualifications, experience and knowledge of the office they seek, not attack the opponent.

 To an adult an oak tree is just a tree, a cloud passing before the moon is just a cloud like those that have gone before. But to a child that same tree is a jungle gym and that same cloud is an elephant in the sky. Things happen for the first time to a child. The world is born fresh with each pulse of time.

To the editor:   On Nov. 14, our family attended the Harlem Wizards basketball game. It was hosted by South Oldham Middle School and advertised as a family event. Before the game, a Wizards player pulled a grown woman to the middle of the basketball court. Music began, and he used sexually provocative gestures, thrusting his pelvis toward the woman to the beat of the music. This started and stopped three times before the player bear-hugged the woman.

 As a true Kentuckian, I love basketball. And I love all aspects of the game – the three point shot, the slam dunk, rebounding, good defense, court positioning, and the beauty of a well-executed play. 

But maybe the greatest move in basketball that turns around more games is the time-out. The time-out can halt the opponent’s momentum, give your team a chance to rest or calculate a way to score an easy bucket.

To the editor:   The wounds of war are not always easy to see. In addition to the physical injuries sustained in conflict, countless servicemen and women have experienced psychological symptoms directly related to their deployment.  Recent studies estimate that 300,000 men and women have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe depression or post-traumatic stress. And there are 18 suicides on average each day among America’s 25 million veterans.

As I think of the final years of my parents’ lives, I note that they were characterized by a continually failing ability to remember.

With my dad and his dementia, it was mostly short-term events and people that would not come back to him.

With Mom suffering from late stage Alzheimer’s, she has lost almost all recall of the distant past, or a few seconds earlier.

Every year I receive a Christmas card from a former favorite teacher who always says he hopes I’m thriving and flourishing. I always tell him that I am. For I believe that I have been blessed to have been around many folks I call my heroes for everyday living who have taught me the lesson of “thriveability.” 

I was required to major in philosophy during seminary. At first I resisted. But the more I understood that a philosopher is a person seeking wisdom or enlightenment, the more value I discovered in philosophy. 

I studied and learned about Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, who provided his three famous questions to ask when we are dealing with difficult things. The three questions that deal with our questioning of our assumptions are:

• What can I know?

• What should I do?

• What may I hope?