Editor, OBSERVER:

In a recent Sunday comic strip “Pearls Before Swine” by Stephan Pastis, is illustrated three cartoon characters. In the panel they are apparently pictured at a food and beverage counter. One of the characters has a pal at his side; and meeting an old friend introduces the pal as his “exercise buddy.”

The recently met friend asks the exercise buddy, if he’d like an alcoholic beverage. The buddy, being a fitness buff, replies that he doesn’t drink alcohol. The friend then asks if he’d like a slice of pizza. The fitness buff replies … that’s terrible for you. Then not to be dismayed, an added offer of chili fries is thrown in. Which gets the response, that eating stuff like that will take years off your life!

The one making the offer then relies with the admonition that, … “life’s an amusement park, and while you may stay there longer, all the rides will be closed.” The closing panel shows the fitness buddy scoffing down the previously epicurean pleasures with gusto.

And from Edna St. Vincent Millay this little poem “My candle burns at both ends it will not last the night; but oh, my foes, and ah my friends … it gives a lovely light.”

So what’s life to be? A brief but hopefully perhaps a pleasurable trip with all caution thrown to the winds. Or a long, arduous, drag it out fight, battling to the bitter end.

RALPH BURKE,

Dunkirk