Editor, Times-Union: I hear that some of those living in Indiana want to leave the union. That notion conjures up an image of a Mark Twain-ism: “If a man wants to carry a cat home by its tail, well, let him. It is not likely he will want to do that again.” If Indiana wants out it is an absolute imperative that it takes along 1. Mississippi, 2. Alabama, 3. Louisiana, 4. South Carolina. My sister was condemned to live a number of years in S.C. She finally escaped to North Carolina, not so many physical miles away but a century and a half away in vision. Her younger daughter was so tiny and scrawny that she did not enroll her in kindergarten until she was 6 years old. When she arrived at school she was surrounded by a bevy of little girls who announced that they could not play with her because her mother was a Yankee. That scrawny little kid grew up to earn a master’s degree from Kent State University in Ohio and a doctorate degree from Duke University and runs her own leadership consulting company headquartered in Durham, N.C., which is an apex in the Research Triangle encircled by Durham/Duke University, Chapel Hill/University of North Carolina and Raleigh/North Carolina State University. This circle houses brainy nerds not just from this country but from around the world and where there is nary a Johnny Reb flag fluttering in the breeze. I consider it the Silicon Valley of the South. The moral of this story is never discount a snubbed, scrawny, motivated half-breed, particularly when half of the breed is a Yankee. Tam Vogel Winona Lake, via e-mail
