SPEAKOUT

Is it for or against?

WHEN IT comes to a woman's right to freedom of choice when deciding what's best for her body, Sen. Kinder argues the right to life position and uses the most inflammatory language to disavow a woman's right to an abortion. But when it comes to business and industry polluting our food, air and water and thus increasing the risk of cancer to all Americans, Sen. Kinder, with equally inflammatory rhetoric, argues the freedom to pollute. Which is it, Senator? Are you for or against freedom, for or against cancer and for or against life? And when there is conflict amongst these, which is most important?

Pressure from councils

I'M GLAD someone else noticed that TCI Cable put WGN back on the market in St. Louis. A question to the Cape and Jackson city council members: Why aren't you pressuring TCI the way your constituents have asked you to? And why can't our cable carry stations only 100 miles away?

Canceled wrong holiday

I'D JUST like to comment on the Jackson School District's canceling of Easter vacation. I feel that Jesus' holiday should be a little more important than Martin Luther King Day and Presidents' Day. I feel that these holidays should be used for snow days before Easter is. I mean, let's not forget our past and what Easter really means.

Not the 1940s

I WANT to say that I feel sorry for the guy who wants to bust into houses with black suits and everything like that. I want to say that Nazi Germany is over. The Gestapo is gone. This is the 1990s, not the 1940s. So live with it. We're not going to get rid of our Constitution just because of you.

SOMEONE WROTE a letter to the editor and said it was rational that Stephen's Point, Wis., didn't have school on Friday but the Cape Schools should have. I can't speak for the superintendent, but I know why I'm glad we didn't have school on Friday. People in Wisconsin really prepare for the cold because they're absolutely sure it is coming every year. In Cape, winter's cold days are relative rare. On a cold day, about five or six of the kindergarteners I work with will come to school without gloves or a hat out of a class of 25. About half of these little ones walk to school. Walking to school without proper clothing on Friday would have meant frostbite. Also, many of the approaches to the schools in town do not have sidewalks. Those little children would not have been heavy enough to break through the crust of ice, and walking on ice is dangerous. I'm not thrilled at all to have to make up those snow days on spring break or into June, but I think the superintendent did the right thing.

REPLY: The point of the letter to the editor was that wrestlers had to report to school even though classes were called off.

Run the water department

THE CAPE Girardeau taxpayers voted for the city to run the waterworks, not to have it out on a what you'd call a profit raising company. We're supposed to run that ourselves, the city is.

Please observe stop sign

I'D LIKE to direct this comment towards the people who live on County Road 222 in Gordonville. As you approaching Route Z to go into Gordonville, there is a stop sign at the end of your gravel road. On about six different occasions in the past six months, I've had to slam on my brakes to miss these people. The ones who cause the most trouble seem to be driving minivans. They need to stop at the stop sign, look both ways before they proceed out onto the one-lane bridge, because they're going to cause an accident, and somebody one of these days is going to have no other place to go, either off the bridge or into the back of them. This is totally uncalled for. A stop sign means stop, make sure no one is coming and then pull out. I just thought this should be brought to their attention, because this has happened more than once.