Dear Editor:

I have assembled another collection of items that I hope will prove of interest to your readers.

Recently several of us ex-pats from the West End were chatting about the “old days” when the subject turned to stopping- places on the highway to Port Angeles. We recalled a good place for ice cream at a restaurant near the Elwha bridge. There was a similar place built partly over the water near La Poel. I seem to recall a kind of store on the river side of the highway at Hecklesville near Snyder. Does anyone else?

Isn’t about time to forgive Pete Rose for his indiscretions and credit him with his amazing number of hits?

There is no excuse for Putin’s meddling in eastern. Ukraine But based on the 2018 election in which he received 90 percent of the electorate in Crimea vs. 77 percent in the rest of Russia (which suggests some validity, perhaps), plus the fact that Russia’s main fleet has always been stationed at Sevastapol (in Crimea) wouldn’t there be some justification for his taking it back?

In 1942 Merrill Field in Anchorage had more operations than La Guardia in New York City.

In the War of the Tripple Alliance (1865-1870) little Paraguay fought its three larger neighbors, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay in a savage war that reduced its population from 525,000 to 220,000. Most of the males perished.

According to the World Happiness Report, Norway ranked first and the Central African Republic las, of 155 countries. The U.S. ranked 14th.

“According to “Time” magazine, 353 million trees were planted in Ethiopia in 12 hours, a world record. Another edition revealed that of the approximately 100 gigawatts of solar generation added in 2018, China accounted for 44 and the U.S., 11.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. is between a rock and a hard place I think it is impossible to reach an agreement with the Taliban, who insist on their Sharia law. They simply can’t be trusted and are prepared to wait however long it takes for us to leave. That is especially bad news for its women.

Our grandparents may have had only an eighth-grade education, but let’s take a look at the final exam in Salina, KS, in 1895. Students were tested in grammar, arithmetic, U.S. history, orthography (spelling), and geography, A sample from the arithmetic section: Find the interest on $512.60 for six months and 18 days at 7 percent.

I could see the end of an era and the beginning of another when I left for the wars in 1943. We were milking by hand, cutting hay with horses and pitching loose hay with forks cutting old-growth logs with a drag saw, and selling the wood for stove wood. I returned to a world of chain saws, milking machines, tractors, and hay balers. Horses on the farm had become almost superfluous. No longer did I join my father on the end of a “misery whip,” sometimes with springboards. Now those big firs were too valuable as lumber.

I’ll end with this: A poll in 2011 revealed that 47 percent of Americans believed in ghosts and 75 percent believed in angels. I suspect the Washington results were quite different.

Sincerely,

Bob Hall