Speak Out A 04/30/03

The battle continues

MORLEY SWINGLE'S special report on the 1863 Battle of Cape Girardeau was super. However, in my revisionist history of our community I will take a somewhat different view. The way I see it, the players may be different, but the battle is still being waged. In its current phase, the Battle of Cape Girardeau roughly pits the forces of city government and their allies at Southeast Missouri State University and Old Town Cape versus a large number of nay-saying rebels led by tough-as-nails Gen. James Drury. The outcome of this extended battle is still in doubt.

The real reason

BUILDING A skateboard park has nothing to do with attempting to help youths and everything to do with trying to get the ragamuffins off the sidewalks and streets.

Disastrous results

GIVING YOUR kids beer from a very early age only encourages them that drinking is OK. Statistics prove that those kids learn early that alcohol is an easy out. These kids are alcoholics at a very early age. The young people we have in detox centers and nursing homes at young ages are a result of drinking being accepted at an early age.

Roundabout is better

PEOPLE NEED to have more patience. A roundabout causes fewer accidents than a four-way stop. If you think people have a hard time figuring out who should go next, they should go to Jackson at the intersection of Main and High and see how a four-way stop can be like taking the math part of the SAT. It's not rocket science, it just takes a little patience to get used to. Chaffee has had a roundabout on the busiest road in town. I don't see people in Chaffee calling in to complain they can't figure out who should go next.

They already know

I GUESS the Cape Girardeau mayor is going to spend thousands of dollars on consulting firms and polls in your water bill to find out what he already knows but for some reason refuses to believe. This city council and mayor are in the process of giving away millions of dollars to a state project over which it will have no ownership or control. Then they have the audacity to come to us taxpayers. This mayor and city council are going to let the city fall down around its ears to protect a venture that was already voted down.

Ask for prayer

REGARDING CHURCH relations: Do your part. Let the church know your personal crisis. Ask for prayer and visitation. Sometimes the first step comes from you. I pray for you.

It's not entertainment

TO THE people who are upset that the churches they go to not catering to them: You're missing the whole point of going to church. You don't go to be entertained or to be coddled. You go to church to worship the Lord. If you will enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise, you will be amazed how insignificant your problems will become. If you are going to church to be entertained, do us all a favor: Go to a movie and let us worship the Lord.

Getting more liberal

"LET US hope that the world crisis created by our own government" goes away, proclaimed cynical columnist Jack Stapleton. Otherwise, Stapleton implied, we'll get what we wished for. Holy mackerel. I always thought that as a person aged and matured he became more conservative. However, in ways Stapleton's radicalism seems beyond that of 1960's counterculture gurus.

Dorena, Dorena

WITH APOLOGIES to Ray Peterson, one who sang the classic, "Corina, Corina," I offer the following:

I love Dorena.

Tell the world I do.

I love Dorena.

But with a casino

I'd love her more true.