To all scared people everywhere

Thank you Mr. F. Matthew Smith for reading my letter of Feb. 21, 2005. It is always a pleasure to hear from people such as yourself who take the time to put forth explanations on points that I had not heretofore mentioned.

I also thank you for pointing out the fact that there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have developed a sudden phobia regarding exclamation points. For this I do apologize, as I did not realize this fact and have no desire to inflict fright upon the general population. I shall, henceforth, refrain from the use of such scary punctuation. I hope the previous use of semi-colons has not instilled some form of malaise for which our hospitals will soon be overrun. But, personally I believe it is not the exclamation points you need worry about; rather the question marks.

There is, however, one point in your letter that struck my curiosity—and the cat is not dead yet. You stated, “Hopefully, we can clear Pagan from all past mistakes (including Azmar) so that…” Now, so far, I am not aware that either Azmar or anyone representing Azmar has been on Pagan let alone made any “mistakes” up there. However, just in case one of us sneaked in there with mayhem in mind, please be so kind as to specify those alleged “mistakes” so that the CEO of Azmar can take immediate actions to fire the perpetrator and correct the dastardly deed. We have absolutely no desire to harm one single thing on Pagan and I want to reassure you and PaganWatch that, as reclamation biologist, we will employ the utmost in care and diligence to keep the untouched 1⁄2 of Pagan as pristine as it is (we won’t be on this half) and use every tool and skill at our command to make the volcanically devastated 1⁄2 better as well.

Some weeks ago, I also noticed a spate of short letters to the editor that I believe must have been written by young adults of the CNMI. It was extremely gratifying to read these letters and I want to implore these and many others to continue writing about that for which you have feelings. The letters I read were “right on”; I’m just sorry I don’t have some of their names at my fingertips. They deserve the attention of all readers. After all, they will be leaders of the future (hopefully, not frightened off by various forms of punctuation).

Dr. Thomas D. Arkle, Jr.
San Jose, Tinian