Letters to the Editor | Week of May 20-25, 2024

Comment criticized

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., recently told an audience, “We were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor.” The threat to the wheat fields of Kansas and the harbor of Charleston, S.C., apparently was so bad that we were forced to flatten Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Historians of World War II say America went abroad to come to the rescue of democracy in Europe and in Asia, not because armies and navies were bearing down on our homeland. And many say we could have kept our nukes in our pants.

Hamas soldiers crossed the border on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, killed and grabbed up civilians, then ran back home before lunchtime, suggesting this was somehow like Adolf Hitler occupying France in 1940 or Emperor Hirohito knocking off the Philippines in 1942 is crazy talk.

Mr. Graham is teaching the same kind of fabricated history Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is teaching young people in Tel Aviv to justify his budding dictatorship there. I’m guessing he’d be fine with the same thing in America in 2025.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

Info wanted on tomatoes

You had a fine article on tomatoes by Barbara Stolz on May 4. Alas, she does not mention what varieties she favors, nor does which ones are resistant to that white fly disease. Go to her Facebook site as recommended and there is not much, she hasn’t updated it in a year. Tried her email and got nothing.

Sidney Beckwith

Los Fresnos

Summer jobs remembered

Looking for a job as a 15-year-old was a challenge, out of my comfort zone. Growing into adulthood was like cutting the cord after you are born, out of the safety zone on your own. Summer school vacation became a venture to keep busy.

Working for a shoe store assisting customers on their selections at times was overwhelming during heavy customer traffic. When traffic was slow, I found that I preferred heavy customer traffic rather than not at all.

A neighbor friend and I went downtown to spend time in the stores looking at books, cameras, etc., and decided to go to a nearby theater and apply for jobs as ushers. It was the lowest entry-level job you could get there. We were hired for the summer and worked two summers there. We got to see new movies that premiered for the first-time. We looked for mistakes, like from one scene to another a lamp would be down on the floor and next scene it would be in place as if nothing had happened. Or different shirts from one scene to the other, stuff like that.

Last summer I went to the neighborhood grocery store and was hired for my last summer job before graduation. Work was more intensive than my previous jobs. I compared bagging groceries to cross-country running, non-stop during heavy customer presence. We would fill brown heavy-duty paper bags with the heaviest items at the bottom, medium in the middle and lightest at the top.

Working overnight filling the empty shelves with no customers at all was the most satisfying. It was hard work to be completed before store opening hours but was very satisfying.

Summer jobs experience prepared me for the full-time work I was to face after high school graduation. Better prepared than not.

Rafael Madrigal

Pharr

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