To the editor:

It’s been a tough year, a tough several years. Let’s take a few days to kick back and relax. For a little while let’s just not worry that:

• Americans are still being sacrificed in Iraq over a year after their supposed mission, the removal of Saddam from power, was accomplished.
• The United States not only refuses to cooperate with but actively opposes international agreements to stop global warming.
• We are mortgaging our children’s future with massive federal debt.
• We are doing precious little to help improve the lives of impoverished and unemployed potential terrorists around the world.
• Federal support for social services, including education, is being slashed so we can buy guns and artificial limbs.
• Health care remains unavailable or inadequate for millions of Americans.

Let’s rest up, gather energy and then get to work to make the world a better place in 2005. There are all manner of ways to help, and all sorts of talents are needed. We can volunteer locally to help provide meals or health care for the needy. We can donate to organizations working for change. We can contact politicians, write letters, send e-mails, carry signs, send packages to our troops, become better informed, work to elect good candidates. We can be more thoughtful in how we use natural resources. We can be more tolerant, more peaceful. We can treat each other the way we would like all people to behave.

Actually, we may as well start today.

Joe Douglas,

Lawrence