letters-to-the-editor-20140105
Lack of common sense
All of the Hernando County commissioners have recently petitioned the mayor of the city of Brooksville to shut down all of the cities red-light cameras for two weeks during the Christmas holidays.
They did this in order to gain favors and votes from our dangerous, reckless and drunk drivers, who run red-lights and cause accidents all without the red-light penalty.
Our county commissioners just do not realize that the purpose of the red-light cameras is to prevent auto accidents and has substantially reduced accidents, according to recent reports.
This kind of thinking by all of Hernando County commissioners indicates their lack of common good sense, not only on the red-light camera issue, but on many other important issues.
If this is their mentality, then it is time to be rid of all of them and replace them with non-political persons with good old fashion common sense.
Norman Pallot
Weeki Wachee
In his letter of Dec. 29 (“A wolf in sheep’s clothing”) Allen Walker enumerated actions taken by those seeking to establish totalitarian government. I think that he omitted another very important step, the control of the education system.
Vladimir Lenin: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
Adolph Hitler: “Give me a child when he’s 7 and he’s mine forever.”
A primary tenet of progressivism is to make the child as unlike the parents as possible because that’s the only way we can “progress” as a society. Sounds like a plan for “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” does it not?
John S.V. Weiss
Spring Hill
As the year 2013 ends, I am writing to express my thanks to my congressman in the House of Representatives in Washington D.C., Richard Nugent.
After his election in 2010, he quickly was put to the test of his professionalism and administrative ability. He staffed his local district and D.C. offices with committed, top-notch constituent service people, many of which I have spoken with over the past three years. He has worked with his previously demonstrated enthusiasm, courage and integrity despite the frustrations he experiences trying to work within the existing federal political power blocks and bureaucracies. Despite the many time pressures and frustrations he faces, Rep. Nugent has taken the time personally to call me on various issues, as does his staff.
It must be a difficult lifestyle to be frequently separated from his home and family, so I also thank his wife, Wendy, and his three sons, all of whom are in the military, as was Rep. Nugent.
I appreciate the outstanding representation of my personal and professional interests, and will continue to support Rep. Nugent in 2014. For those voters who are not familiar with Rep. Nugent, I recommend that you find his record at votesmart.org. He is quiet, unassuming, personable and effective for the people of the 11th District Florida, and I thank him and his family for his work on our behalf.
David Millendorf
Spring Hill
The feature story for 2014 in Hernando Today by Michael Bates offers a marvelous author in our midst who reveals his work-at-home employment producing four western novels a year for Penguin Random House books.
As a writer and former journalist, I can attest how consummate the effort becomes. A good writer producing some six to 10 pages a day is on the mark. Journalism taught me how to preserve in typing copy to draw the reader deeper and deeper into the story. Fiction and fact have common ancestors. Especially is this true for western drama.
Aristotle’s great essay, “POESY,” delineates the formula for drama in that there is a protagonist arriving on the scene to save the community against an antagonistic force with evil intent. What is hoped for achievement is anagnorisis as the Greek term for recognition and reconciliation drawn deeply into the souls of the community.
To put it simply, in Hemmingway, the matador is the hero. The running of the bulls has the community laying hands on the bulls symbolically giving up their sins. Victory by the matador cleanses the community. The evil force may be within with corruption, for instance, as it is in so many of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Westerns fit fine in this genre. They are basic to the tenants of the Aristotelian formula. I shall be eager to have a read at one of Ralph Cotton’s westerns.
Deron Mikal
Brooksville
