- November 23, 2024
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An absolute riot: Manfre was ‘on duty’ in Virginia
Dear Editor:
Your story on Sheriff Jim Manfre using his police car to drive to Charlottesville, Va., to visit his daughter and son-in-law, having a fender-bender while there, and then turning the car in to a local garage to have the taxpayers pay for the repair while not breaking any agency policies is an absolute riot.
Does the agency have any policies?
He was on duty, man. In Virginia. Wow. That makes everything hunky-dory. And now the sheriff says he will never do it again, mainly because he got caught. If he didn't have that fender-bender almost 600 miles from Flagler, was he going to be “on duty” in Yellowstone National Park next year? Or how about the arts festival in Taos, N.M.? It sure makes the Flagler community rests easier knowing that the sheriff is always there for us, wherever “there” is.
Victor Washkevich
Palm Coast
Use local funds to hire a local superintendent
Dear Editor:
Despite the Flagler County School District's continued improvement in state and national rankings, with decreased funding, we hear calls for importing an unknown out-of-state person as the next superintendent. Why on earth do people believe that punishing success will be beneficial for our community?
I firmly believe in the succession plan the School Board has barely started and hope that the Board will honor the implied commitment to promotion based on the measureable improvement in Flagler Schools.
As a community, we should have a policy of hiring and promoting qualified Flagler County residents when using local taxpayer funds.
Karen Jacobs
Bunnell
Astounding! Modern marvels at students’ fingertips
Dear Editor:
Last week, my granddaughter’s high school, Flagler Palm Coast, distributed individual computers to all of its students, notably the Mac Book Air, a small, sophisticated machine that is quite versatile, and which retails for $999.
While waiting in the line with her for her machine, I reflected on my own high school days (September 1946 to June 1950) and tried to recall what were the wonders of that age that awaited us in high school. To put this in perspective, one must recall that World War II had just ended in August 1945. The country was in the throes of the segue from full wartime production to a peacetime economy, and there was a lot of pent up demand for goods such as autos, appliances, etc. Esoteric things like computers were confined to government installations and universities and bore names like ENIAC. Actually, all I knew then of computers was knowledge gleaned from Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, thus they were filed in the “out of reach” or “futuristic” recesses of my brain.
What was the breakout gadget of the day? In New York City, thanks to the hype created by a retailer, it was the Reynolds Pen, the marvel that could write underwater, $12.50. (Bear in mind in 1945 the minimum wage was 40 cents an hour, and $12.50 was more than enough for a night at the Waldorf Astoria.)
The crowds that greeted the Reynolds Pen debut were enormous, rivaling those of the iPhone of today in proportion, as more than 5,000 stormed Gimbel's. All of this for a ball point pen!
Students of the day had few choices in writing instruments: the ubiquitous No. 2 lead pencil, a quill pen or the fountain pen. The latter two put the student in peril of ink stains on our hands or clothing. The Reynolds Pen was touted to end those problems with its self-contained supply of ink. Some of my classmates in grade school were given one at graduation; I was not among them, so I entered high school with a supply of pencils and a trusty quill pen to dip in the inkwells found at each desk. My parents later took pity and provided me with the affordable version of the fountain pen then sold at Woolworth, a Waterman for about a dollar.
Thus there is a vast difference in my high school days and today's, with the distribution of electronic marvels like the Mac Book, as opposed to the comparatively primitive tools with which we had to equip ourselves. Cursive writing was the basic means of communicating for most of us, since typewriters were largely unavailable to mere students.
I pray the students who are the beneficiaries of the School Board’s largesse recognize the value of what they have at their disposal, the doors to learning they will have opened through them, and that they do as well with them as so many of my contemporaries did with their primitive communication and research tools.
Christopher J. Hoey
Palm Coast
