To the editor:

Three Independent items during the first week in September caught my attention:

A 9-5-23 letter telling us that discipline is out of control in the schools. The 9-6-23 ‘Small towns disbanding police forces’ stated: “Fewer people are applying to be police officers, and more officers are retiring or resigning at a tremendous rate,” “Lyon Co. bans cannabis use in public places,” details the county ordinance put in place since Minnesota legalized adult cannabis. That week I also read in the 9-1-23 issue of AAAS ‘Science’ a study was conducted that said pregnant women who used cannabis gave birth to children who were 31 times more likely to have disruptive disorders, and seven times more likely to have anxiety disorders than those of women who did not. Couple this with the ‘woke’ agenda, the occult, porn and modern day slavery depicted in ‘Sounds of Freedom’. It’s a bleak future for our youth. Quite a difference from my early years when I and another little boy stood in a field a block west of F street and Main watching the last of the steam locomotives on the C&NW railroad (circa 1955-56).

I like how a lady from Willmar describes earlier days:

“I am thankful to have grown up before neighborhoods became quiet. Before they lost their heartbeat and lay like dead things on the land. It was a time when most mothers were home nurturing their families and fathers were proud of providing for them. When school ended, kids smelled freedom; they hopped on their bikes and with a joy, known only to the young, rode like the wind all over town. From dawn to dusk you heard the sounds of the neighborhood; children laughing, a dog barking, the slam of a screen door, the clatter of a push mower, or a mother calling for her child. There was activity, there was life, there was energy in our neighborhoods and when night came our streets were as safe as mid-day. Kids didn’t lip off to adults, girls were taught to be modest and boys were taught to be gentlemen.”

Phil Drietz

Delhi