Library legislation

Dear editor:

Now we have Senate Bill 81 to address concerns that libraries might distribute materials “harmful to minors.” I heartily praise the words of local librarians Adam Webb and Amy Shipman and April Grace and believe they know more about children and libraries than a table full of state legislators. If Sen. Dan Sullivan wants to help libraries and students, he should legislate more money to help them meet their needs.

Don’t you just love it when someone says, “factual history,” as if history were one large book into which some Ichabod Crane just poured history like cool water into a waiting glass? Of course, no historian believes that. Our governor, SHS, has raised questions about the AP African American studies course offered by The College Board, a course designed in consultation with “more than 300 professors of African American Studies from more than 200 hundred colleges” (Arkansas Democrat-gazette, Jan. 29).

I had a student who attended a local high school in which evolution was never mentioned; when he attended college at a prestigious southern university, every biology class — zoology, physiology, etc. — was listed in the college catalog as an evolutionary class: evolutionary biology, evolutionary physiology, etc. Has Governor SHS seen “Nova” on PBS? Has Sen. Sullivan? What do those images from the James Webb telescope tell them about the world we live in?

Governor SHS wants businesses to locate in Arkansas, to bring their wealth and talent to our poor little state, which I love, but does she imagine those businesses will come to a state that fears the future, that wants to hang on to some imaginary good old days that were not good in many, many ways?

Ken Cook Hot Springs