[Editor’s Note: It’s always good to get

To Sherry Holliman: I just read your article in the July 12th Evening Times “Be a Joy to your Community”… Fyi, Loved it! Very well written and such an appropriate reminder to people – (it costs $0.00 to be a decent human being) It reminded me of one of my favorite facts from the past – When Ancient Egyptians entered into the Afterlife their souls were weighed against a feather to see If their heart /soul was worthy of entry into the Afterlife, During the balancing of the scales their heart was placed on one side and the feather of truth on the other. They were asked 2 questions during this moment of judgement both answers to these 2 questions with equal importance (weight)… (1) Did you give Joy? (2) Did you _nd Joy? Needless to say if you were found wanting their soul could not enter into eternity it was unbalanced… And if it was they were promptly eaten by a crocodile! Wow… But anyway thank you for the great read!

a reminder that people do, in fact, read our local commentators, like Ms. Holliman, as well as Clayton Adams and Jeremy Thornton, so thanks for sending this. Unfortunately, there were a lot of cool “emojis” that didn’t make the paper since my formatting software isn’t quite able to convert little hearts and rainbows and such into newsprint, but the spirit of the message is still here. And it’s de_nitely worth repeating. My daughter has a little sign hanging in her bedroom that says “Kindness is free! Sprinkle that $#!% everywhere!” Some folks de_nitely struggle with the whole giving and _nding joy thing here in a world where we seem to be addicted to outrage] Is anyone else having the hardest time with west jr high about their child starting school? They started last Wednesday and the child still hasn’t started and they never give you a legit answer, besides they don’t have enough teachers or electives for the kids. And they never EVER return a call back. How is a school able to open if they don’t have any of those?! [Editor’s Note: From what I can gather, there was just a “perfect storm” of teachers leaving, having new teachers being hired late in the summer, a bit of a time crunch with the new school calendar shaving weeks off of prep time and some other related issues that led to schedules and staf_ng being not quite ready by last Wednesday. But, as they say, the show must go on and the students and staff at West will surely get everything going this week. I can assure you that schools all over are having some of these same problems as the state of education in our state is, to put it mildly, in a state of ux with the LEARNS Act and other factors playing into the issues]

burning but now in the province of Herat, Afghanistan, the Taliban has started burning musical instruments. A ‘voice of an angel’ has been replaced by the ‘instruments of the devil.’ As was obvious with worries about the gyrations of Elvis the main cause of ‘moral corruption’ was probably youthful hormones not an instrument of the devil. Music is a ‘gift from God’ and yet the Taliban cannot see that in their blinded world. There might be some instruments we could get by without, the bagpipes, any badly played violin and certainly the ukulele and yet many love them. Perhaps the range of instruments and voices could serve as an example of the diversity of people in the world but if only they would listen. Don’t listen to the sounds of silence. [Editor’s Note: This was very poignant and poetic but I can’t imagine what we here in Crittenden County might do about it. It did make me wonder, though, how the Taliban are still a thing in 2023. Didn’t we win that war?]