Reply All | Letters: The 12.8.13 Issue

A LOST BOY GROWS UP

As someone who runs a nonprofit with a mission to help newly arrived refugees in the job market, I understand the challenges that Jacob Deng Mach faces. Most refugees desperately want to work, and work itself can be healing, but survival and resilience aren't always enough to enter the job market in a new country. I was especially struck by how Jacob would unintentionally press the gas and brake at the same time while driving — what a great metaphor for the transition he is navigating: hoping, pressing on, backing up, starting over. KEITH COOPER, Director, Beautiful Day, Providence, R.I., posted on nytimes.com

Jacob sounds very nice, and I am glad he has a good job. But I am also glad that he won't be an armed policeman. I found it strange that the instructors were pushing him forward rather than taking note that he was struggling to shoot. It certainly makes me wonder how many have passed the test, perhaps just barely, while struggling in similar fashion. It can't be wise to arm a person whose past was so full of violence and strife. His inability to shoot was a signal that something was wrong; it was time to stop, not push forward. P.S., Massachusetts, posted on nytimes.com

LIFE ALONG THE 100TH MERIDIAN

I'm from Nebraska. I think people tend to construct narratives that seem beautiful to them and impose them on people they see as ''other.'' You wouldn't guess from this article and the photos that people in the Sand Hills spend a lot of time watching satellite TV, for example. One of the most interesting things about the myth of the West is that it was constructed primarily by Easterners. Frederic Remington lived in New York, and the dime-novel industry was based here. In a sense, the West has often functioned as a kind of Rorschach test for Easterners, who saw what they wanted or needed to see in it. ALEX STRASHEIM, New York, posted on nytimes.com

THERE'S A REASON THEY CALL THEM 'CRAZY ANTS'

Thank you for the crazy-ants article. I was in need of a long sigh of exasperation. In 2006, the U.S. Invasive Species Advisory Committee, of which I was a member, asked the secretary of agriculture to investigate these ants and recommend containment action. The U.S.D.A. concluded that action wasn't warranted. Clearly it was. We need the federal government to evaluate the potential impacts of invasive animals on infrastructure and wildlife (not just agriculture and human health) and act in a precautionary manner when detailed scientific information is lacking. Many organisms have not been technically described and named, nor their biology studied. JAMIE K. REASER, Stanardsville, Va.

There is something wonderfully ironic about this ''new'' breed of insect: the idea that it likes to make its group home inside electronics and inhabit our gadgets. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with the overflow of ants slipping out of your USB slots, your smartphone ports and the vents of your flat-screen TVs. RICHARD KOPPERDAHL, New York, posted on nytimes.com

THE WEDDING FIX IS IN

Those of us in the wedding industry are standing up for ourselves in response to this article. I don't charge more just because it's a wedding. And I'm open with my price ranges before I meet with a client so that no one's time is wasted. I ask questions about the event because there is no way I can provide flowers for people who don't tell me what they want. I charge for the amount of work that goes into it. When I work on an event for over a year with multiple meetings, dozens of emails, proposal changes and production hours and then see someone upset that they have to pay for that, it definitely hits a nerve. Weddings are parties, and if we were charging too much for our services, the market would self-correct and drive prices down, or we wouldn't have a market at all. CORINNE SEBESTA SISTI, Philadelphia, posted on nytimes.com

NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE

"What do you mean 'anymore'?" @meganbungeroth, via Twitter

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