Bring positive thoughts to the season and new year

Bring positive thoughts to the season and new year
EDITOR:
What do we want for Christmas?
By the looks of the traffic to the mall, we want many things. This is the time of the year when we don't hold back on spending. It is a good feeling to throw caution to the wind and enjoy the season. We prepare all year for Christmas as we put our feelings aside about family members and celebrate the season: shopping nonstop to make Christmas a perfect day.
Did you ever realize the energy that is put into preparing for that one day of the year? The churches are packed and our voices are raised high as we sing Silent Night.
Does the overspending at Christmas compensate for the previous year, or are we programmed to get a quick fix from whatever ails us in one day?
All year as we work every day and go about our daily lives, did we take the time to listen to our children throughout the year, comfort our significant other when things did not go well? Did we take the most out of each day as if it were are last?
Those of us who are lucky to have the ones we love surround us this Christmas should be thankful.
Christmas is a wonderful time of the year, but so is every year and day that we are alive.
What do we want for Christmas? How about knowing that we lived the previous year with enthusiasm and joy each day. If we had disappointments, we accepted them as a part of life and learned from them. Most of all, we made it throughout the year and surrounded ourselves each day with positive thoughts, and brought comfort and harmony to the people we encountered.
The lights, decorations, and the giving of presents are wonderful and keep the magic of childhood alive in all of us. As a new year begins, let us enjoy the season and give that extra hug and smile throughout the coming year.
BARBARA LYRAS
Youngstown
Men who injured cattle deserve real punishment
EDITOR:
Cathy Moff's herd of dairy cows are more than just "property" to her. That is why the prosecutor's failure to bring animal cruelty charges against the men accused of beating them with a baseball bat is all the more painful to her.
Although the three men have admitted viciously beating 20 cows one night last June, so far, prosecutor Edward Sturgeon has decided to only charge the boys with "vandalism to a business."
Perhaps it is the unfortunate sentiment that cows are "property" first and living creatures second that has made the prosecutor so reluctant to file animal cruelty charges. Yet beating an animal for personal enjoyment is a clear violation of Ohio's animal cruelty law and should not go unpunished.
Perhaps the prosecutor would pass off the boys' actions as a "childish prank." Yet extensive data compiled by the FBI, law enforcement agencies and psychologists state otherwise; animal cruelty can be one of the earliest and most dramatic indicators that an individual is developing a pattern of seeking power and control by inflicting suffering on others.
There is no doubt that the men who attacked Cathy Moff's herd of dairy cows deserve to be charged with both property destruction and animal cruelty. Otherwise, their pattern of cruel behavior may continue, to the detriment of both the animals and the human citizens of Ohio.
ARIANA HUEMER
Washington, D.C.
X The writer is a member of the Animal Cruelty Response Team of The Humane Society of the United States.
Patriotism alive and well at least for one young man
EDITOR:
Shortly after the Sept. 11 tragedy, I was watching a news forum where Peter Jennings was asking random questions of teens. One of the questions asked was if you would fight for our country. I was disappointed to hear the majority said that they would not.
I would be scared to death, but I would proudly defend our country's freedom. My grandfather and his father and all of the others before them fought to keep our country free.
What our founding fathers think about no one wanting to defend what they founded -- freedom and patriotism. God bless America.
JAMES SKOLODA
Struthers
X James is a student at Struthers High School in the American History class of Ralph Sandy.
Residents wrongly fight improvements to road
EDITOR:
On the north end of Canfield Township lies Gibson Road. It is a road in complete disrepair and in need of immediate attention. It is too narrow for two cars to travel down at the same time. Its sides are falling into the drainage ditches, and it is so rough that the 1-mile trip down the road gives one the impression that they are on a thrill ride. Last year a Canfield school bus even had to be pulled out of the mud because it got stuck while making a turnaround.
To most people this seems like a simple problem: just fix the road.
Unfortunately, not for some residents of Gibson and Canfield Township Trustee Judith Bayus. They want the road to remain in its deplorable condition.
A few of the residents have even filed what they call a "taxpayers lawsuit" to prevent any work from being done on the road. Ironically, the lawsuit has cost the taxpayers of Canfield Township thousands of dollars in legal fees and thousand of dollars in patchwork repair to make the road safer.
All this when a grant from the state was secured to help pay for a majority of the project. Sounds like a good deal to me -- a new road for less than half the cost. The problem is the lawsuit has tied things up and if the project is not started soon Canfield Township may lose the grant and end up paying for the entire project.
Trustees Paul Moracco and Bill Weaver see this incredible opportunity to improve the north end of the township with state money and make the road safe in this fast-developing area. Once again a bad road, a misguided politician, and a few ungrateful residents are holding back progress in Mahoning County.
At the trustees' meeting, a resolution was brought up again to improve Gibson Road. Trustee Moracco and Trustee Weaver voted for the resolution, but once again Trustee Bayus voted it down.
Gibson Road will be improved sooner or later. The question is, will a lawsuit field by a few people end up costing the taxpayers of Canfield Township hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and a lost state grant?
People's self-interests should not get in the way of the betterment of a community, and those responsible should be held accountable for their actions.
LEO NAPOLITANO
Canfield Township
Cal Thomas column said what needed to be said
EDITOR:
Even though you religiously, pardon the pun, give the Cal Thomas column the most prominent position on your editorial page, I seldom read it completely. When I do, I seldom agree with anything he says. I've always considered his social and political views to be somewhat to the right of the ultraconservative Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority.
Imagine my stunned surprise as I read and reread his column of Dec. 13 and found myself agreeing with almost everything he said.
His position is best summarized by this statement: & quot;Things might have been better if, instead of sending money to the national headquarters of religious leaders and pledging allegiance to their preferred politicians, conservative Christians had been busy feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, caring for widows and orphans and -- most notably absent from the movement -- loving their enemies."
I don't know if old Cal has undergone a conversion or if I have, but to that statement I utter a resounding amen.
HARRY E. ROSS
Boardman