Open Forum

Early this spring among other things I bought two Cascading Petunia baskets. They were a deep reddish purple in color.

I hung them up high by my front door so that people driving or walking by could enjoy them. In fact people have stopped and asked me if they could get a closer look at the flowers in my yard. Yes, they're mine, but they're there for all of us to enjoy. I watered them every day and fertilized them as needed, they were beautiful.

Yes, you're right, on Friday night, June 23, someone walked up the steps to my front door and stole one of them. I put a lot of work and hard earned money into that hanging basket. Not only that, but I haven't all that many summers left to enjoy the flowers.

Just return it, and nothing will be done or said. I checked some greenhouses and they are all out of the Cascading Petunias. Now if someone out there knows where that hanging basket is please call me. I am offering $100 cash money to the first person with the correct information. So far in my driving around I have not seen one that resembles the one I am looking for; so they are rare, but I will continue to look.

Ross Hardesty

Brainerd

Happy with coverage

As a subscriber to your newspaper and a strong supporter of public education in Crosby, I want to congratulate you for the complete and detailed coverage by staff writer Jennifer Stockinger, of the June 26 Crosby-Ironton school board meeting. You not only made it front page news, but also chose to devote interior space for two additional, well-written and informational articles about our school district.

At a time when too often it seems like newspaper editors choose to use "bad news" sensationalism type stories to "sell" newspapers, I hope your readership appreciates your devotion in this case to informing the public about probably our most important task -- the education of our kids!

Duane Welch

Crosby

Parade was success

Jodie, Jodie, Jodie, I read your article on what a bad time you had at the Nisswa Parade. Right off the bat you were mad that you couldn't find a parking place, then you were mad at the pushy people followed by you thinking all parents were bad by letting their children get candy. Then you were mad that someone hit your camera lens which you felt reason to tell us readers how much it was worth. Actually, the whole article you wrote was about you! You never told of the history of the Pickle Factory, you never told about the Clydesdales, you never told that all in all, no one got hurt, everyone had fun and the whole day was a success! I know, I am a bartender at the Pickle and not one person was rude to me that whole night! Shame on you, Jodie! I think you owe all of us an apology -- better yet, next time, stay home!

Lani M. Hatrick

Nisswa

Birth control

Human suffering and death due to war, famine and disease are tragic issues, but they are not birth control issues. Any suggestion that the Catholic Church and its hierarchy would consider birth control as a means to end human suffering or that it was out of fear of undermining the doctrine of infallibility which prevented it from changing its teaching on contraception reveals ignorance of the Catholic faith and its teachings.

For 19 centuries Christian churches taught that it was immoral to use unnatural methods of birth control. Our own anti-contraceptive laws, such as the Comstock law of 1873, were passed by Protestants for a largely Protestant America. It was not until the Lambeth Conference of 1930, that Anglican bishops broke with the previously unanimous Christian teaching. Pope Pius XI immediately renewed the tradition of the Catholic Church in his encyclical Casti Connubii with " ... any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature ..."

It was amidst this controversy, as well as the discovery of the 'pill,' and a growing perception of a population problem that Pope John XXIII appointed a commission to advise him on these issues. Pope Paul VI received the Papal Birth Control Commission's majority report in 1967 favoring a change in the current teaching. The minority report argued that the Church could not change its teaching regarding contraception because this was a matter of God's law. Pope Paul VI issued his prophetic encyclical, Humanae Vitae, in 1968 and reaffirmed 2000 years of constant teaching that " ... each conjugal act remain ordained in itself to the procreating of human life."

Kevin Blum

Brainerd