Friends, family make the difference
I rented the movie "Stop-Loss"the other night. The movie's main story is about a soldier who is involuntary retained by the Army under "Stop-Loss. "Beyond the main story, however, is the story of this soldier's father and mother and his best friend's girlfriend who has been waiting to get married for five years. Their story is my story.
I have experienced life without my soldier now for nine months and the toughest part, so far, has been the separation since my husband left Arkansas the first week of January 2008. There are so many emotions and issues I deal with on a daily basis. Now I do what two people did just a year ago and it is very hard at times; however, I seem to find the strength and perseverance to make it through.
I know that a lot of people told my husband they would "take care of me "or "check in on me"but they haven't. In a way, I wish they would not have said this to us. It would have been better if they would have said nothing at all. However, there have been a few real angels here in Northwest Arkansas and I want to take a minute to thank these people because they have allowed me and George to focus on taking care of his soldiers, which is what he and I truly believe is important.
Thanks to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Libraries, and in particular Beth Juhl, Cheryl Conway, and Tom Dillard (and his lovely wife, Mary ). You do not know how much those care packages mean to George and the soldiers. And Cheryl, thanks for being a friend.
Becky and Bob Echols and Roselie Conley, who have sent care items to George and have watched over me during his deployment.
Andrea with Northwest Arkansas Soldiers Angels, who has befriended me, been wonderful to my husband and his soldiers, and has helped me with issues at my home. The Fayetteville School District, which have had several classes adopt George's unit, and in particular two soldiers who were not receiving any mail from their families. Thanks to all the teachers and students ! Heroes at Home and Rebuilding Together of Northwest Arkansas, who have helped me with the flooding my house endured during the storms in March. And finally, Congressman Boozman. Even though he and I do not see eye-to-eye on the occupation of Iraq, his staff has called me and the congressman has personally written to me. Thank you, congressman ! So I leave you all with this. If you see a service member's spouse or parent, don't forget to thank them for their service. They are the backbone of the men and women in uniform. These families give our men and women in uniform the ability to focus on their mission and they make sure our service members receive care packages so their deployments are a little more tolerable. They may not be on the front-line but they play a vital role in our military.
Sophia Fowler / Fayetteville
Let's blame freethinking arrogance
In his letter of July 9, Mike Lumpkin responds to Art Hobson's article with the fundamentalist premise that truth is a function of one's perspective of it. This idea is also common to post-modernist "philosophy. "All physical evidence can be interpreted to mean whatever you want it to in the search for psychological comfort, thus reducing the entire concept of "truth"to meaninglessness. Empirical evidence is anybody's opinion. Anything goes ! From this ethereal foundation he launches a series of typical attacks on evolution and science in general, all of which have been refuted countless times. To adequately answer all of them would take far more than the word limit allows. For those wanting to explore any of these questions there is a Web site, www. talkorigins. org, which provides answers to just about all of the objections to evolution, cosmology, etc. for any creationist / intelligent design advocate who dares to look. His citing of the framers of the Declaration of Independence, C. S. Lewis, William F. Buckley and the Bible is a perfect example of the "appeal to authority "fallacy and is irrelevant. None of them were evolutionary biologists with an in-depth knowledge of evolutionary theory. Lumpkin also accuses those of us with a respect for empirical evidence as arrogant. But if creationists are so filled with humility, why do our natural, evolutionary origins bother them so ? One reason is the very same reason that the Inquisition had for sentencing Galileo to house arrest for the rest of his life. Galileo showed us that we did not rest at the center of the universe. He knocked us off our cosmic pedestal and demoted the human race. Our pride was so hurt it took the Vatican more than 400 years to apologize. Darwin did the same thing in 1859, and fundamentalists still can't get over it. It is not the scientists and freethinkers who are arrogant but the believers ! It is science that must keep re-introducing humility to those with egos so vast that they believe that the entire physical cosmos was made just for them.
Kent Barnett / Fayetteville
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