Support Your Local Media - Letter to the editor

Dear Mr. Pine

Our family would like to give Michelle Gardner and Louis Brewster a standing ovation. For months now, I have openly congratulated the Daily Bulletin on your tremendous coverage of local amateur, high school and college sports. We especially like the interviews and the listing of upcoming contests. This has made a significant difference, I do believe, in the attendance figures for the schools and their teams.

My only suggestion, at this point, would be that the photos chosen be the sort that players and their families would be proud to see in your paper. Successfully getting a shot away, over an outstretched arm or scoring the winning run, is certainly better than a tangled up offensive player and the back of a defenders' head . . . or a collision at home plate where neither player is clearly identified. The student athletes and their families, throughout the Inland Valley, love your sports reporting. Provide photos that the kids will be proud of and truly hope everyone will see . . . will surely sell more newspapers.

Thank you for this opportunity and keep up the great reporting.

Respectfully,

Ed Pruitt and Family

Sincerity . . . forever

A genuine smile . . . a firm handshake . . . and sincere compliments. Hopefully, these personal qualities will forever be appreciated. With more and more of our waking hours being occupied in front of the computer, television or behind the wheel, I'm afraid we are gradually disconnecting with quality day-to-day human contact.

Letter writing has, virtually, become a thing of the past. Can you remember the joyous swell of emotion when you would receive a hand-written letter from a friend or loved one? You knew the writer took the time to think about you and you alone. They composed their thoughts and shared them with someone special . . . . you. These days we have email and text messaging. For business and/or emergencies, this electronic wizardry can be lifesaving. But there is a, very negative, flip side to this. Our kids are now reverting to a cryptic shorthand and abbreviations in order to say more with less words. I foresee, in the future, our kids having a tougher time with vocabulary, spelling and sentence composition. Surveys have shown our kids continue to lose ground, educationally, compared to youngsters around the world.

Whenever possible, talk to and really listen to others. Every day, you have ample opportunities to share your most genuine smile . . . a good firm handshake and extend sincere compliments. Enjoy the mutual benefit from extending yourself to others. Quality human contact must live forever.