First of all congratulations for your weekly newspaper, it’s one of the best ways to be informed of what’s happening here. Allow me to say a few words about Dr. Bart Barlogie, featured in your cover story Feb. 23. I’m a Mexican citizen, living in Mexico. A few months ago I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. You can imagine how these words changed my life. After a few days of research, my family and I took the decision to come to a place that I had never heard before — Little Rock — see to Dr. Barlogie.

I was afraid to be a patient of a so famous doctor and I was sure that I was going to be only a simple number in Dr. Barlogie’s list. After four months of treatment, with many complications on the way, I feel as the luckiest man in the world, even if I am in the middle of the way, and that’s only because I am Dr. Barlogie’s patient.

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I don’t know if all the administrative issues you wrote about are correct and I don’t care about that. For me he is like my father, my big brother, taking care of me, not like a number. He is warm, he cares about me. When I am sad he always has a good joke, I feel optimistic when I’m near him. Maybe this isn’t a part of the protocol or the administrative way. But for me as a human being who is suffering, Dr. Barlogie has been the best that could happen to me.
Isaac Fridman
Little Rock

Teacher pay
I read about the Walton teacher pay incentive program and I think, “What a crock!” Here’s a better plan. Pay ALL teachers a fair and livable salary. Our schools would then attract more and better teachers. With a larger pool of capable teachers to choose from the school boards will then have no problem phasing out incompetent teachers.
Robert Retsky
Hot Springs

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Clueless in N.O.
I am one of those refugees from New Orleans. We moved there in 1999 and when the storm was imminent, we sought refuge here (hence the “refugee” tag, which we don’t find in the least offensive, but then, we have never been PC). We are still here and it almost feels like home again.

In an almost deja vu moment, I recently picked up a copy of the Arkansas Times. Two things became disturbingly evident. First, the editorial bent of the Times, which when I left was stuck somewhere in the 1960s or 1970s, is moving even further left, regardless of where the rest of the world’s creative political thought might have moved since. This editorial group is apparently still hopeful that we will soon adopt the government philosophy of European socialism. And I thought conservatives resisted change!

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Uh, guys, that philosophy hasn’t caught on here and even Europe has had second thoughts about going further down that fruitless and expensive road. Folks with more open minds have been learning that government can’t solve most problems, much less all of them, and that every step in the direction of giving problems to the government to solve is a step away from personal freedom. Thankfully, however, liberals have become largely irrelevant nationally and pretty much everywhere but here and Massachusetts. And thanks to the centrist stance of most of Arkansas’s elected Democrats (their Alito votes notwithstanding), liberals are only marginally relevant here, except for the prurient entertainment value. Max, for crying out loud, read something written by someone other than a liberal think-tank wonk!

The second thing I noticed? I still have absolutely no clue what Bob Lancaster is trying to say. What the heck was the useful message we were to draw from “Weasel world?” In his attempt to be folksy, he becomes impossibly, maddeningly nonsensical. What was he smokin’ that day?
Pepper Paulson
Little Rock (temporarily)

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