Dear editor, Dear editor,
Liz Cox is Iola’s bicycle ambassador. Liz is a one-person bicycle touring missionary.
Last year a man from Germany was having bike trouble. Liz asked is she could help and he said some part was broken and couldn’t be fixed. He needed a new part. Liz asked which way he was going, finding that Wichita was on his way. She called a bike shop and asked if they could stay late so he could get the part and be on his way the next morning.
She took him and his bike to Wichita, got the part and took him to dinner.
Last week she helped a couple heading west. They were in Fort Scott and couldn’t find a bike part, so she took them to Pittsburg, then back to Fort Scott where they checked into a motel.
If anyone can offer any kind of help to cross country hikers or bicyclers, please let me know so we can start a registry offering assistance to these modern day pioneers.
Kathryn Ronay
Iola, 620-363-4809
A wise old lady once told me you can learn at least one good thing from every person you meet, which goes along with Will Rogers’ “never met a person I didn’t like.”
This can be true of nations and cultures, both past and present.
The idea for democracy came from the ancient Greeks, intellectuals of Athens. While Spartans, of ancient Greece, were a war-like community, which by force killed democracy, then and there.
We saw this repeated in Germany when Hitler took over. He was one man of whom it was hard to find anything good about. He was a bully on a national scale.
We see this on a smaller scale in schools and politics. It’s easier to get people to hate them than to love them, which is considered “sissy” by some. Though some take love to mean all sorts of off-color activity, which is wrong, too. It also has a bad kickback.
Fortunately, we can learn many good things to live by, from people we meet, both past and present.
Jim Brownrigg
Iola
Letters to the editor 4-15-13
