To the editor:

The Mayor of La Grange and our County Judge have encouraged the St. Mark’s Hospital Board to try just one last affiliation to aid their troubled operation, this time the “Progressive Health Group.” I recall advice that a failure in a complex system often has a single source; those seeking a fix should ask one question: “what single element is common to this entire system?” In the case of St Mark’s Hospital, it is not the facility, it is not the federal or the county governments, nor are two successive consulting firms to be blamed.

To the editor:

At what point is it necessary to grant tax abatements to corporations while the landholders end up paying more in taxes? If a corporation cannot yield a profit without a tax abatement then maybe they should be looking for some other project.

Fair warning: I’m writing about my dog. (She’s fine— no worries, there; old, like many of us, but fine…so far.) Or mostly fine.

In this great nation of ours we are privileged to have numerous reading resources at our disposal whether it be bound books or wireless electronic reading devices. We also have the freedom to become authors to express our feelings or compose our life story.

Early voting is now underway for the Nov. 7 general election. Voters will decide the fate of 14 proposed amendments, including measures to provide property tax relief and raise the homestead exemption to $100,000.

T EXAS History As the presidential special sped him back to Washington on Oct. 26, 1909, William Howard Taft dared to dream of carrying the Lone Star State in 1912.

Oct. 19-23, 1973 After a six-day rain, total 1973 precipitation gauged in La Grange stood at 50.46 inches.

How do we comprehend and react to the horrors of terrorist attacks, the senselessness of lives brutally taken, the devastation of families, and the destruction of cities? What gaping hole in a person’s soul can be filled by slaughtering babies, murdering randomly, instilling fear, and causing heartbreak? What creates the hatred, meanness, and loathing erupting in many parts of the world? I’m not equipped to understand or find answers to these mind-numbing questions. All I can do is ache for those targeted, and the ones inadvertently caught in the drama of the unexplained dreadfulness.

To the Editor:

A recent “pearl clutching” FCR letter (9/22) ended this way: “We cannot expect strong leaders for freedom when truth in any subject is denied the student.” Don’t we all agree? That letter writer was responding to another writer who observed that “we must tell the truth about history to serve the common good through prudent public policy.”

To the Editor:

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw the three possible routes for a truck by-pass as a go around for the bluff. I can honestly say that these three routes would have been really funny if they were not actually planned by an engineer.