A gentleman named G.J. Warnock described empathy as "moral imagination." He viewed putting oneself in another's shoes as one of the components of a moral compass leading to the good life.

I am married to a philosopher, and as a family, we have spent many an evening around the dinner table discussing what living the good life means. When our kids were younger, our son tended to equate the good life with the number of toys he owned.

His acquisitiveness was scorned by his older sister, who thought that there must be more to living the good life than acquiring things. She seemed to be more on the path of developing her moral imagination.

An industrial wind project is challenging the moral imagination of my county. The situation reads as follows.

• "I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse."
• "Holy Spirit, please be with me."
• "God was with me, and I asked Him to be with me and He never left my side."

These statements were given by Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard for the megachurch "New Life Church" in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after shooting Matthew Murray. Mr. Murray was on a shooting rampage at the time Ms. Assam intervened. He had killed four people at the megachurch and a missionary training school before turning the gun on himself. Ms. Assam, a new Christian, strongly believed that God was with her, guiding her to stop any further killings.

Dear Mr. Lowry,

I am writing this letter in response to your commentary, Weather more tame than wind arguments.

There were several errors made in your comments concerning my part in opposing the proposed wind project. One is a technical one. The quote you used from my open letter was published in the Ellis County Environmental Awareness blog and was never published in the HDN, though you claimed all of your quotes came from the HDN.

Oh, for the days of "the Big Boss" from Kansas City, MO. Ted Pendergast with help from his brother Michael had become one of the great political machines of the twentieth century. From stuffing ballots to road construction, they took care of their own. The Pendergast machine can be credited for Harry Truman's ascendancy to the White House. Truman with gratitude once stated that he loved Michael, "As I did my own daddy."

Some of us in Ellis County are in the throes of a wind fight, and we sorely need a daddy, but all we are getting is ...

"The sounds were the soft 'whoosh' of the blades as they rotated in the wind, and the gentle humming of the machinery...nothing more than a lullaby, a sound that might lull you to sleep", reads an excerpt from Darrel Miller's recent column (Hays Daily News, 1 April 2007).

Wind generated electrical power is clean. Why then are we fighting it?

On Friday morning I heard a story on NPR's Morning Edition which puzzled me. Host Steve Inskeep interviewed Martha Raddatz, the ABC News Chief White House Correspondent. The interview was based on The Long Road Home, her book about the time she spent covering the Iraq war. The interview centered on a particular battle in Sadr City, a battle in which the First Cavalry Division encountered an ambush for the first time. This took place in April 2004. The soldiers thought they were being sent on a peacekeeping mission - Ms. Raddatz referred to it in terms of babysitting on several occasions - but encountered something totally different. The division discovered obstacles on the road with a large crowd of thousands moving toward the group of nineteen soldiers on patrol. The Iraqi group consisted of the Mahdi Militia, children, adults and elderly citizens of Iraq with the children positioned in front. They were carrying signs and some adult males were carrying swords. In brief, the Iraqis began to shoot at the group of soldiers and a battle ensued. Some US troops were killed as well as many Iraqis including children and the elderly. The battle was cited as the turning point in the Iraq war.

The main point was ...