CARTOON: Very convincing work

Dear Mudgy: Please do not be sad about the drawing in the paper last week. I know you and Millie did not make the plans for McEuen Park. You're just a nice children's book animal from right here in Coeur d'Alene and we love our Mudgy and Millie and all you have done to help our library.

The silly drawing did help me decide something, though. Before, I was not going to take sides about the park. But that drawing reminded me of how, way back in the 1960s, some people did not want us to spend money on bringing in the Boy and Girl Scout Jamborees. But that got a lot of tourists coming and made so many new jobs and left us with a wonderful state park nearby.

I thought about how some people didn't want Mr. Hagadone to build any kind of beautiful flower park for us. A lot of people would have come to look, and that would have made some jobs.

And I thought about how some people do not want schools where kids learn to spell big words like Mudgy and McEuen. It is just hard for some people to understand anything new, I guess. Many new things are not good, but it is building new things that makes jobs.

So you and Millie take the tourists up on Tubbs Hill, and show them how pretty it is. Maybe they will bring their kids and families, shop in our stores and buy houses and cars here. We could sure use that. Maybe my own kids will want to raise my grandkids here. As for me, I will take another look at the McEuen project, because drawings like that make me favor the proposal more and more.

MIKE BULLARD

Coeur d'Alene