Speak Out 10/10/05

Be neighborly

LAST SUNDAY evening my husband and I were driving through the so-called bad end of town. I drive a convertible, and I was waving and talking and God-blessing some of these people. They were such nice people. They were sitting on their porches conversing. Lots of them were on their way to church. I think even the druggies waved. Everybody needs encouragement. Please start checking on your neighbors. And don't judge lest ye be judged.

Expensive trips

IF SCHOOLS want to cut back on the fuel costs, they don't need to go to a four-day week. They need to cut out these 100- and 150-mile trips to play a ball game. That's ridiculous. Players can either pay their way, or they don't play.

Send them to prison

ACCORDING TO the police report, it seems that law enforcement is doing a good job of rounding up dopers and drug dealers. If this success results in stopping the drug trade in Cape Girardeau, Jackson and the entire county, more prisons will have to be built to cage this flood of drug addicts and dealers. We need more prisons. That solution would stop a lot of crime, vandalism, burglaries and fires.

No advance warning

JACKSON HAS a lot to learn about how to handle traffic. It is the day of the band festival, and they have the roads blocked off with no advance warning until you get right up to the square. The problem is you've got to backtrack. Between the band festival and the construction, it's almost impossible to get back to Highway 72 or U.S. 61. When you're going to have something like this, have some kind of barriers up saying "Street closed in three blocks" or something.

God's on both sides

THE SO-CALLED moral majority truly believes God is on the side of the Republican Party. Think again. There's a lot of Christians in the Democratic Party. That doesn't mean we're all left-wing radicals, just like not every Republican is a right-wing radical. God is with everybody.

ID carelessness

MY DEFINITION of identity theft is apparently different from the state senator from Cape Girardeau. When you leave your wallet with driver's license and credit cards in your truck and it's stolen, it's not identity theft. It's a lack of maturity in the real world. I hope he has been practicing the seven paragraphs of instructions he gave in the Missourian.

Keep us informed

REGARDING LITTLE Ethan, the 4-year-old from Perryville who passed away: Who failed this child? DFS, relatives, neighbors, the community? I hope justice will be served. Please keep this story alive so it might help another child to avoid the same circumstances.

Dangerous policy

FOR ABOUT two decades the family services departments across this nation have gone too far in their policy of "keep the children at home if possible." We have only the very slightest idea of how many children have been seriously abused and neglected or have died because they remained where so many think they should: with their parents. How sad.

Other reasons

A REMINDER to everyone: Gasoline prices started to go up when we decided to gallop into Iraq and find weapons of mass destruction. It's not all the fault of the recent hurricanes.

Event organizer

GARY RUST'S assessment of the Lueders' exhibit at Southeast Missouri State University failed to mention that Dr. Lisa Speer, special collections archivist at the university, coordinated the event, prepared the exhibit and arranged the speakers. Besides managing an invitation list, providing professional archival practices and preparing accommodations, Dr. Speer's skill brought in over 120 Cape Girardeau citizens who came to learn and study the photographs, thereby honoring the Lueders as a Southeast Missouri institution.