Children can’t be left alone in cars

It seems like a daily occurrence this summer: children dying after being left alone near and in vehicles. So far in 2008, 106 children nationwide have died in and around cars, according to children safety advocacy group, Kids and Cars. All of these deaths could have been prevented had those in charge of the children’s care just took a little time to ensure their safety.

Parents, caregivers and others who work with children will do anything to keep children safe. Yet, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, children can get forgotten or neglected. We need to keep a better eye on our kids.

August and September are typically the hottest months of the year in Washington. When out and about, take your kids to a cool place. Don’t leave them in your car when you’re running errands. Many parents of children who have perished in vehicles say that their task was to take just a moment. But when distracted, a parent’s few moments can become longer, resulting in their child’s death.

A child’s body does not have the same internal temperature controls as those of adults. Their bodies can warm three to five times faster. Heatstroke occurs when the body core temperature reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and a body core temperature of 107 usually is fatal.

Between 1998 and 2007, 339 hyperthermia deaths were reported around the country.

But deaths don’t just happen in a hot car. This year we also have heard in the media, even locally, of kids getting backed over, run over or even being strangled in automatic windows. The reports are heartbreaking.

Please don’t leave your kids alone in or around cars. It’s a matter of life and death. Let the remaining summer be filled with good memories.

Jim Lippert
President, Skagit County Safe Kids
Mount Vernon


Servants in houses of own minds

Divine madness, which I sustained in 1981, is not an experience I would recommend to anyone. The power of it so overwhelms the person that one is brought early on to see that we are servants in the houses of our own minds.

Our will is suborned, though we are given countervailing will against this force, which is subsuming it. The struggle to survive this power, to control it, to integrate it, is one that goes on for many months. It’s like balancing on a wave that is always on the verge of breaking!

Some insights coming from this Second Birth are:

• All are unique and there is no other one like them.

• All are priceless, unto the least and beginning there.

• All are wise at the heart of the within.

• We pass through awake from this world into glassless clarity.

• Those we know and love in the here, we will know and love in the after.

• Each and every one of us is a center of All of Being.

Finally, there was a man named Jesus (from Mexico), who, in his task of dying, saved me and kept me in this world. He died on Good Friday 1986. Such is the way.

Leland Mellott
Mount Vernon


More forgiveness, less judgment

When people judge other people, it is not their right to do so, unless they are elected judges for official law cases. One type of judgment that is extremely wrong is to judge a person while you do the same thing you are judging them for.

That kind of situation can have devastating effects on an island, town, city, country and the whole world. Most of the time that this happens in an area, it is from people who feel depressed and have low self-esteem because they feel guilt for what they have done.

In extreme cases, some people judge other people for things they do and feel good about it with no guilt. In these extreme cases it can cause a major effort by people who are victims of these tactics to make changes that can really change things in a big way.

The problem can even go further than that when people lie about somebody claiming they are this and that and try to ruin their lives.

Let the person who has never done anything wrong be the first one to lie about or judge somebody else. We should all try to be more like the great nun Mother Theresa, more forgiving and less judgmental.

David Worth Goss
Everett


Dems pandering on energy front

Howard Pellett’s Aug. 16 Soapbox letter accuses John McCain of pandering because his proposals include domestic drilling as part of a solution to our energy crisis.

While McCain’s ideas may not be perfect, at least he understands that any useful plan must include actually procuring more energy, something that appears to have eluded Pellett and others such as Barack Obama and Rick Larsen.

These gentlemen propose to bring down prices by enhancing conservation and creating more green power — essentially the policy of the past 20 years — plus new taxes on oil companies. If Pellett understood what pandering meant, he would realize that the Democratic energy plan fits the definition much better because it promises price reduction without providing any way to achieve it.

Next, Pellett outlines his own idea, stupefying in its disconnection from reality. He suggests making nice to the mullahs in Tehran and assumes they will in exchange boost production by 1 million or 2 million barrels a day.

He ignores that Tehran is busy building nukes, making it the subject of economic sanctions by the world community. Its oil infrastructure could not support this increased level of output without foreign help, effectively requiring an end to sanctions. Nor does Pellet explain why Iran would want to bring down oil prices, something against its own economic interest.

Rather than sending billions more to the terrorists in Tehran, we need to spend the money here on exploration and drilling and nuclear energy while continuing aggressive conservation and alternative energy programs. This sounds a lot more like the McCain plan than anything being proposed by Democrats.

When Democrats took over Congress, gas cost about $2 per gallon. They had an opportunity recently to vote on offshore drilling. Rather than allow a vote, they chose to go on vacation instead.

So much for pandering.

Mark Lijek
Anacortes