Letters: Readers discuss acts of kindness, bicycle etiquette, gun laws and a beloved cookie recipe from The Star

Cherished recipe

This evening we just finished baking “Evin’s Decorated Sugar Cookies”. The recipe was originally published on Dec. 18, 1991, in the “Neighbors” section of The Kansas City Star.

The full page article was about a mother, Cheryl Burdette, and her daughter in Prairie Village.

My newsprint now has many spots and grease stains from years of use. Baking these cookies has become a family tradition for my family too. The cookies are so simple to make and the flavor is so great!

Sally Clausen

Sioux City, Iowa

Evin’s decorated sugar cookies

Makes about 4 dozen

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups butter or margarine, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

4 cups flour, sifted

1 teaspoon baking powder

Confectioners’ sugar

Flour (additional)

For the icing:

4 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine

4-6 tablespoons milk

Food coloring

Instructions:

In large bowl cream together butter or margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla and almond extracts. Sift flour with baking powder and add gradually to creamed mixture, beating well after each addition. Beat until smooth. Do not chill.

Roll out to l/4-inch thick on board which has been dusted with a mixture of 3/4 confectioners’ sugar and 1/4 flour. (Adding more flour only makes cookies tough.) Cut with cookie cutters into desired shapes, then place on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake in 400-degree oven 8-10 minutes. Do not allow any browning. It is better to underbake than to overbake these. They will be fragile and soft when coming from the oven.

For icing, beat together confectioners’ sugar, vanilla and almond extracts, melted butter or margarine and enough milk to make good spreading or piping consistency. Add desired food coloring.

Cool cookies, then decorate with icing and any combination of toppings such as candied sprinkles, colored sugar, chocolate sprinkles, cinnamon candies, nuts or candied cherries.

Big thanks

Many thanks to the person who found, and returned, my credit and Perks card at Hy-Vee in Mission. I am so grateful to you. Blessings to you in the coming year.

Teddi Oppenheimer

Overland Park

Cyclists, motorists

A recent letter writer to The Star is “perplexed by the demands of bicycle riders.”

No, we are not “demanding” anything. Don’t need to. We have long-standing right to the road.

The writer claims that we pay no taxes, ignoring the we’re-all-in-this-together fabric of society. Most of us own cars in addition to our bikes. We pay gas tax, sales tax, property tax and income tax.

The letter writer lives in Kansas City, Mo., implying that he doesn’t pay taxes in Kansas. So, in the name of fairness, I’ll get my bike off the road if he will not drive his gas-guzzling car on our Kansas roads.

Scott Gregory

Roeland Park

I am a cyclist. I have a job in Kansas City, Missouri, own three cars, a house and pay taxes for each.

As a seasoned cyclist, I don’t require all the bells and whistles of a modern cycling community. I merely ask that motorists pay attention and don’t run me over. But I know dozens of would-be cyclists who don’t ride very much because they fear being hit by a car.

Because of that, I advocate for bicycle friendly roads. I want more people to experience the health and economic benefits of cycling on a daily basis.

I also want to minimize the risk of the economic and emotional damage motorists experience when they injure a cyclist. Successful cycling communities leverage 1 percent of their road budgets for cycling-friendly infrastructure, to obtain a 6 percent replacement of cars with bikes.

This benefits both cycling commuters and motorists by reducing traffic friction. It also gets more people out on bikes to experience the very real health benefits of the ride.

Call me crazy, but this seems like a win-win.

Thomas M. Deacy

Kansas City

Background checks

A recent letter demanded background checks before purchasing guns. The writer also demanded that certain classes of person not be allowed guns. These classes were defined as felons, the mentally ill and domestic abusers.

The writer will be happy to learn that there has been a background check system for over twenty years.

She will also be happy to learn that felons, the mentally ill, domestic abusers and other classes have been prohibited from possessing guns for at least as long.

These laws can be found at 18 U.S. Code section 922 and the excellent ATF web site atf.gov.

Kevin L. Jamison

President,

Western Missouri

Shooters Alliance

Gladstone

Prescient book?

Columnist Paul Krugman deplores blindness to creeping fascism (Dec. 23, 9A, “In our eroding democracy, parallels to the fall of Rome”), giving the 1930s passing mention. Recently I returned to Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel, “It Can’t Happen Here.”

Speeches of the book’s emerging dictator, Senator Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, in his run-up to the U.S. presidency, were “simple and direct,” as in “tells it like it is.” He aimed to run the country “as his private domain” and was supported by “forgotten” white men and “remnants of the KKK.”

Windrip advocated “vast business dealings with the Russians.” He accused the media of lying, threatened reporters, encouraged roughing up dissenters at his rallies, despised labor unions, believed women belonged at home, promoted bans against religious minorities, debased blacks, and as president-elect assumed powers that weren’t lawfully his.

What have we done to ourselves?

Norm Ledgin

Overland Park

Goose/gander

I am a bit confused by all the anti-Trump rhetoric related to his views and actions towards Russia. What exactly are the reasons why liberals are so outraged at any possible rapprochement with Russia?

They say that Putin is an undemocratic dictator, guilty of intimidating and suppressing any popular opposition to his rule while jailing, torturing and even murdering political opponents. His agents are guilty of undermining and destabilizing regional regimes, and supporting subversive groups in open conflict with neighboring governments. All the while, Russia continues to work against the interests of the U.S. globally as Putin rails against America at every possible public opportunity.

All absolutely true. However, exactly the same litany of sins apply to both the Castro regime in Cuba and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei regime in Iran. And yet, many Obama supporters applaud his efforts to reach out to these regimes in an attempt to normalize relations and m ake the world a safer place.

It seems to me that our liberal friends are highly selective (hypocritical?) in their outrage over which leaders deserve rapprochement and which do not.

Daniel Galindau

Kansas City

We the people

Is it just me who sees a parallel in Kellyanne Conway’s insisting that Donald Trump will be the “people’s president” and the names of two countries who are not especially friendly to us, and, worse, don’t exactly recognize freedom of any kind? The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China come to mind.

Trump has much to prove. I pray that Congress is strong and vigilant.

Gerald Valet

Kansas City

Blame for the debt

Gen Xers and Millennials want to blame the baby boomers for this nation being $20 trillion in debt. Check this:

The boomers were born from 1946 through 1964. Their peak year was 1957. According to Christopher Chantrill’s USGovernment

Spending.com, the United States’ worst deficits occurred during World War I, the Great Depression and World War II.

Dave Ramsey was not around to insist that the government pay its war debt in the 1940s and 1950s, so it carried forward. Our total deficit today includes over 70 years of compound interest on those debts.

Add in the Vietnam War, all of LBJ’s welfare programs, the space program and who knows what, and you’ll see that the financial leviathan known as the national debt was off to a great start before any of the boomers were even born, and was wildly out of control before most of the boomers had graduated from high school.

Gen Xers and millennials should study history and economics before they blame the boomers for this nation’s financial problems.

Steve Grant

Kansas City

Equitable rate

I note with interest that Scott Tucker is requesting more time to mount his legal defense against misleading payday lending, wire fraud and money laundering charges. (Dec. 24, 9A, “Tucker asks for another delay in payday loan criminal trial”)

By all means, he should be granted as much time as is necessary. However may I suggest that in return for any extra time granted that he be subject to a 700 percent increase — the top rate he is accused of levying — in any penalties, sentences, legal fees or fines that may be levied against him for his activities?

It is only just and right that he be shown the same mercy and deference he extended to those who used his products.

Merle Brockhoff

Kansas City

Plaza changes

One of Kansas City’s signature landmarks, the Giralda Tower on the Country Club Plaza, was formerly adjacent to the home of Swanson’s, a high end department store. In the not-so-distant past, it sold things like wedding gowns and fur coats with price tags sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Now this beautiful building is home to a discount clothing retailer. If it isn’t bad enough that such a noteworthy location must be desecrated in this way (it could possibly be blamed on the economy), on a recent visit with my teen daughter, I learned they don’t even boast a public restroom.

No self-respecting department store would ever have dreamed of not having a public restroom in the past, much less one on the vaunted Country Club Plaza.

The teen sales clerk who directed me down the street to Starbucks did not understand that I don’t trust my 50-something year old bladder to make it back out in the cold, down the street, and perhaps to wait in a long line.

It is therefore very sad, but not surprising, that Halls also chose to close their Plaza location.

I am a second-generation Kansas Citian who hopes for better things for the Plaza’s future.

Julie Walden

Prairie Village

Israel policy

The U.S. did not veto the incorrect and unfair U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction in Judea and Samaria. (Dec. 24, 7A, “U.S. abstains from U.N. vote on Israel”)

I hope Congress will see fit to work to get this resolution canceled.

I also hope Congress will not allow any U.S. funds go to the U.N. until this disgraceful resolution is reversed.

Leonard Williams

Overland Park

This story was originally published December 31, 2016 at 3:45 PM with the headline "Letters: Readers discuss acts of kindness, bicycle etiquette, gun laws and a beloved cookie recipe from The Star."