Readers Write (Oct. 18): The culture and how opinions are formed, Edina police incident, mental illness and jails, Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize

Last week, I read a well-written commentary by a farmer explaining why politicians and, perhaps, even we can be considered responsible for polluted waterways ("Blaming farmers for pollution? Look in the mirror," Oct. 14). Yet, chemicals from farm runoff continue to flow into rivers and streams. Also last week, an article and reference to a YouTube video portrayed a confrontation between a possibly impaired African-American pedestrian and a Caucasian off-duty police officer in Edina ("Outrage spreads with video of arrest," Oct. 15). Given current events with race relations, a notion of a potential escalation of events must have been on many minds. (On Monday, it was announced that a misdemeanor charge against the pedestrian will be dismissed.)

On the front page of Monday's local section, I read the Star Tribune article about Target stores pulling clown masks because of recent issues with frightening and potentially harmful people wearing these masks. Yet, just to the right of the article was a photograph and somewhat jovial stand-alone photo presentation of someone being made up as a fairly frightful-looking zombie type of character. Meanwhile on Monday, I closely witnessed a bicyclist laden with a backpack and assumed he was going to work. Most assuredly, he was helping the carbon footprint, but he was clearly texting while riding.

We live in a society where distinctions and decisions of right and wrong face us continuously and may well be sought after in certain arenas. In some situations, there are actual laws that not only guide but govern. But there are gray areas and middle grounds, and I struggle to be cognizant of views I do not necessarily share and balance what I personally feel are moral and ethical ones and common sense.

Tolerance is much needed, but has the word "tolerance" become trite? What I consider common sense surely differs from that of various friends and neighbors. Can anyone please assist me here?

As a retired police officer, I feel compelled to support the Edina officer who was the subject of a video when he dealt with a person who very well may have become a traffic statistic. The man was walking on the white line that separates the main roadway from the paved shoulder, which puts him perilously close to vehicle traffic. The officer stopped to deal with what he saw as a hazard.

The video starts with the officer holding onto the man's jacket and leading him to a safer spot and also displays the start of a verbal assault on the officer and obvious reluctance on the part of the pedestrian to peacefully comply with the officer's efforts. The rest of the video shows verbal abuse by the subject and an attempt to pull away. At no time does the officer raise his voice or be more forceful in physically calming the subject than simply holding onto the jacket. The mediator who stopped to film the interaction attempts to interfere with her comments.

I ask this "mediator" how she would have felt if the officer had simply driven by the man and a few seconds later the pedestrian had become a hood ornament on an SUV. I suggest that she go out into the real world and see how mediation has its limitations in dealing with certain persons. She might also take note that the officer was in plain clothes and not wearing the "intimidating" uniform with gun belt, Taser, boots and peaked hat that apparently brings on fright in people.

If it would have been an elderly white man or woman walking in the street, what are the chances that the police would have made more of an effort to assist, to find out if that person was lost or suffered from a medical issue such as dementia? The Edina police need to be more cognizant of their own biases and mindful of split-second assumptions.

I was pleased to see Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek's Oct. 17 commentary "Addressing the mental health crisis in jails." The kicker was the L.K. Hanson quote elsewhere on the Opinion Exchange page: "True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it," from Karl Popper.

Almost everyone in my family has a mental illness, I included. Some of us have gotten help, and some have not. In one case, it took 15 years, the loss of two children, a car, self-worth and a jail stay of months before the family member saw the light and started to look at herself. A couple of others are still dangling the "I'm OK, leave me alone."

What Stanek has started is a lifesaving tool for the inmate. We can only hope that the rest of society will step up to the plate and support his efforts in jail and out. No one ignores a person with a broken leg; help will be offered. Because we cannot see mental illness, a lot of us choose to ignore it. Shame. It could be you.

I'm not really jumping on the Bob Dylan bandwagon today. I actually had a front-row seat 51 years ago. While growing up in Madill, Okla., at 15 years of age I managed to get a job as a DJ along with a fellow 15-year-old friend, Terry May, at a 50-watt radio station (KMAD, 1550). The station was a 6-a.m.-to-6-p.m. broadcaster of local news and music, and a supplement to the Madill Record, a weekly paper circulated on Thursdays. The station was so small that we had to solicit records via the mail in order to get them before they were released to the public.

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An Oct. 15 letter writer states that Dylan should not have won the Nobel Prize for Literature because he is "a minor poet," unlike Dickens and Dickinson. I remember back in 1963 when my older brother brought home an album "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." When I listened to a raspy voice manage "Blowin' in the Wind," I laughed — out loud. The next time I heard it, I laughed again, but a little less. The third time I heard it, I wasn't laughing.

Great literature should have an effect on the reader. Whitman, Dickens and Dickinson write very nice prose and poetry, but they didn't change me. Bob Dylan did.