Letters To The Editor

Childhood Song Treasured Memory

 

Dear Editor:

  While passing a child care center on the way to my mailbox, I heard the children singing a song that I treasured as a youth. A few years ago I posted a brief story about the song, and thought I’d share it with you.

  A gentleman named Henry Warner lived in a grand home in New York, when the crash of 1837 caused him to sell it, and move to a pre-revolutionary home with his two daughters. The home was on Constitution Island in the Hudson River, across from West Point.

  In order to help with the family needs, the girls, Anna and Susan, began writing poems, stories, and novels. They had 106 things published, and co-authored eighteen. Their most famous novel, “Say and Seal” was second only to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in sales.

  In the book a Sunday School  teacher holds and comforts a young boy dying. The girls needed a poem for the teacher to quote to the child, so they wrote the following words: “Jesus loved me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so, Little one to Him belong, they are weak, but He is strong!” You know the rest.

  The girls went on to teach  Bible classes to the cadets for 40 years, and the cadets keep up their home to this day as a remembrance.

  Anna and Susan were buried at West Point with full military honors. The only civilians so honored.

Don McConnell
Water Valley

 

 

It’s Time To Protect Our Environment

 

Dear Editor,

            It is time to address a REAL issue.

            We live on planet Earth in Yalobusha County, Missis-sippi. Our home. The environment we live in determines the quality of life for us, our children and generations to come.

            Is it even a possibility that burying 40,000 pounds of chickens in town (more than once?) could help the environment? Is there a possibility that the stench produced from chicken production could be good for air quality (oder, airborne illness-respiratory, allergic reactions)?

            Is it even a possibility that an overloaded sewage lagoon (ammonia nitrogen level 100 percent too high) could be good for Otuck, Yocona or Enid Lake (sores on skin, contaminated fish, destruction to ecosystem)?

            Is there  a possibility that our over-stressed water system can handle the pressure of continuing to supply water to the chicken plant without any further breakages (brown water, chlorine burn out)?

            Is there any reason to place a business above the health of the environment? Is there any reason to place a business over our health?

            Is it time for the chicken plant to find another place to call home? Forty years of pollution seems to be enough for me. This is OUR home.

Thank you,
John Forsyth