Well-run recovery home could help a lot of people

Regarding the Camera editorial on a Boulder recovery home: A well-run recovery home with required attendance at Narcotics Anonymous meetings, a skills training program and work requirements can help a lot of people with drug addiction problems. Perhaps the Front Range Community College or the University of Colorado could participate in this initiative.

— David Atwood, Boulder

Being educated means learning how to change

Carl Rogers says, “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.“

I was ten years old in 1946 when I saw, for the first time a naval officer at our front door being greeted by my mother. Ed was dressed in his dress uniform of a Lieutenant J.G and just back from duty in the South Pacific where he served as a supply officer on a destroyer escort. He was at our home in Ohio to pick up my sister, Gloria, to escort her to choir practice at the church where his sister, Olga, was the choir director. Gloria was in her room getting ready when he arrived. My eyes were as big as saucers seeing a naval officer up close like that. I was watching all this unfold as Ed waited patiently with my mother in our front entrance. All of a sudden, my mother came up the stairs, halfway and called to Gloria that she should come down right away, or she, my mother, was going to go out with him in her place. I did not understand what was taking place, but I knew it was something special. I watched from the top of the stairs hoping that my sister would hurry up.

When Ed found out, during choir practice, that Gloria was only 15, he told her that they should try this in about three or four years. My sister was headstrong and knew what she wanted. Four years later, they were married and I had the best brother-in-law in the world.

He told me about being in the battle of Iwo Jima, and Okinawa where his ship was hit by a Kamikaze plane that forced his ship to be towed to a repair center for repairs. I loved him. He came into my life at just the right time. I learned so much from Eddie. He influenced me in many ways.

He personified what Carl Rogers said, “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”

— Joseph La Camera, Boulder

Carlson’s support of menthols is out of touch

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s recent “Take your hands off my menthols — Pure Power Play: Banning things people like,” continues to showcase Carlson’s pro-tobacco thrust. Could his menthol position be racist as menthols are most popular among Black people? My late southeast Alabama childhood friend who felt Caucasians were the “chosen race,” once told me that I should air-drop free cigarettes over Africa — he wasn’t joking. Does Carlson’s national network barking for people’s right to smoke mean that we should have the right to use lead-based paint to cover our asbestos-mudded drywall? Carlson asked, “Why do they hate tobacco?” I hate it because as a little boy, I witnessed it painfully torture my poor WWII Staff Sergeant father to his emphysema tobacco death in 1964. How does Carlson pick and choose his pro-life positions?

— Mike Sawyer, Denver