Speakout 9/23

Friday, September 23, 2005

I was wondering if anyone has noticed the absence, or the demise of many, many mosquitoes in the last three weeks. I would like to think it was the city's spray truck but in reality it was hormonal spray that the crop sprayers put on the cotton to stunt its growth. Even though it made half the people in town sick, it sure did get rid of the mosquitoes. I guess we have a choice, mosquitoes or perhaps everyone dying of cancer because everybody was sure bothered by it.

I'm a non-Catholic and would like to convert to the Catholic church. The closest one to me is in Benton but I don't know anything about it. If someone could put in Speakout the times of the services and how I can go about going to a Catholic church being non-Catholic if I want to convert. This would be very helpful.

This is about the person who wrote "Call in the answer" on Sunday, Sept. 11. About food stamps and cell phones. People have cell phones because of the fact they might not have a home phone. Most of them sometimes are pre-

paid phones and they use them for emergency usage. And not all black people receive food stamps, there are plenty of white people who receive food stamps as well.

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I'm calling in to answer the "Call in answer" where the lady is saying she works at a local grocery store and she doesn't understand how people can come in with food stamps and a cell phone. I work every day and I have food stamp card and I bust my butt to make ends meet too. It is not hard to have a cell phone and food stamp card. It might not be much on there. I don't get no $300 or $400 and I'm a black person. I'm not elderly and I have seen elderly get more than $10. I'm a black woman and I work every day and I don't get $300 or $400 in food stamps but I do have a food stamp card and a cell phone and I work for everything I have. Maybe if she budgeted her money a little better maybe she could have both too.

When we put out mother in a nursing facility in this town we were told that they had legal rights. Apparently they do not because they are not forced to get up at 5 a.m. in the morning. We would also like to know since when is it OK to cut a resident's hair when it is against their religion? The last time I checked you could not legally force anything upon anyone if it was against their religion. There is a lady in the facility and someone snuck up behind her and cut her hair. Now the owners of this facility need to do something because there is a thing, and I haven't agreed with it to this point, called the ACLU and they love to jump on cases like this. What we want to know what is the number where we can reach the ACLU. This is against people's personal religion and it is also that they have no legal rights.

I called because I just read Michael Jensen's editorial. I have never read anything that was so true before in my life as I have that editorial. I just think that they do have generation after generation after generation getting money when they are able to work. I also think these young girls that have these babies, three and four, I think anybody can make one mistake but after they have the first one then the taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for anymore. After all, there is birth control. After all there is a man involved so they should make him pay if they are going to have these babies, three and four at time out of wedlock.

I'm calling in reference to the Bradford pear trees that were along Interstate 55 in Miner. The article on the crape myrtles. I do believe that Sikeston has more billboards than almost any place I have ever seen. We have done a lot of traveling and so many of the towns and you drive into them and you do see flowering trees or flowers planted along at the beginning of the town. In Sikeston the first thing you see is billboards. I think Sikeston is really becoming billboard city. It is not just me who feels this way because we have guests from out-of-town come in and they mention, "Boy Sikeston has a lot of billboards don't they?" So I think Sikeston needs to take a look at its billboards and think about what our community looks like as people are coming into town.

Last night we went to the Cape Fair. We were amazed to find health inspectors inspecting each food vendor that were there. There were two. We can't understand why anything like that has ever been done in Sikeston. All the years we have been going to the Cotton Carnival and the carnivals coming through, we have never seen a health inspector. These were very visible, they had their badges on them telling them what they were. At first we didn't know what was going on then we got close enough where we could read. I really, really appreciate that and think that Cape County probably has their act together.