Opinion

Ah, nothing like April showers to bring May flowers. I had a heavy rain marked on my hoar frost calendar for April 24. It started May 23 and we must have received two inches. Don't ask me how much that was in metric because I'm not bilingual.

Before beginning my daily chores, I scan through the news in hopes that I might have escaped the usual reports of war, of suffering, of injustice and of grand-scale tragedies.

We have not had a new movie column here for some time so now seems the perfect time to write about the state of things for the first four months of 2014.

Dear Editor Tuesday, April 22 the City crews came down our back lane, removing all the dumpsters. Several City employees and equipment spent several hours performing this removal.

International Astronomy Day is May 10.

Dear Editor I just finished reading Brian Zinchuk`s article, "The gun kooks were right" (Regional Optimist, April 17) and I have to say that I thought it was brilliant.

Ed, my neighbor next door, was impressed to find out that we will be off to British Columbia for a two-week holiday.

Dear Editor I'm a kook? I am curious as to why someone would make such an insulting accusation against hundreds of thousands of law abiding, tax paying Canadians they don't know personally ("Take away guns, people turn to knives," Regional Optimist A

It's something I've seen more than once in my career - the "can't get past the lead," or in some cases, "can't get past the headline," phenomenon. One example involves an April Fool's Day spoof that is best left out of the discussion.

Before I even begin this editorial, let me start by saying two things: 1) I get paid to write these editorials, usually on behalf of the paper, although sometimes the opinions are my own. It's my profession as a journalist.