No place for children using fireworks to celebrate America

Letters to the editor
Published: July 16, 2008

No place for children using fireworks to celebrate America

Although the use of fireworks in the city limits are prohibited, it is still in existence in some neighborhoods. How do I know this? I can hear them and sometimes receive their remnants on my lawn and drive way.

If children are to blame, supervised or not, it really should stop. They are not professionals and fireworks of any kind is very dangerous.
After all, your home or lawn could burn while you are away or sleep, resulting in someone getting hurt or burned property or even death because of someone else’s negligence.  We should celebrate our country’s independence on a safer note.

JBK Thomas
Auburn

Reenactment of colonial days, King George harkens to today’s regime

I just had the best 4th of July of my life.

My wife and I attended a late afternoon get-together at the home of John and Betty Lawrence, co-hosted by John and Joyce Newland. We not only had sumptuous food, activities, and good fellowship, but we also enjoyed a reading of the Declaration of Independence.

It was done in this way we all had copies of the Declaration and, going around the group, different individuals would read a paragraph. In all my years (and there’ve been a heap of them), I have never read the Declaration in its entirety. Oh, I have scanned it but never read the whole thing carefully.

The parts that are usually left out when the document is printed or read are the various acts of England and King George, which were objectionable to the colonies. Ironically, many of them sound all too much like they could be written today, with another meaning:

“He has refused his Assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He as obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his Will …

“He as erected a multitude of New Offices ...

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our consideration and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent ...

“For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended (suspected, sic) acts;

“… For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.

Tell the truth: Who are you thinking of King George, or would-be King George?

O.C. Brown
Opelika

Don’t get ‘lady’ or ‘gentleman’ confused with ‘man’ or ‘woman’

When considering the two most misused words in the English language in my opinion a very close second to the words “I” and “me” are the two words “lady” and “gentleman.”

It’s not unusual to hear words on the radio or television similar to these, “Two convicts escaped from the county jail yesterday. One was captured immediately and the other gentleman is still at large,” or, “a local house of ill repute was raided today and all of the ladies who worked there were arrested.”

Ouch! A convict is a gentleman and a prostitute is a lady? Give me a break! A gentleman can be defined as a man with high standards of propriety and correct behavior and a lady can be defined as a woman who has refined habits and a cultured nature.

Come to think about it, many of us could be misrepresenting our very own characters and backgrounds when we enter rooms marked either “ladies” or “gentlemen” at local restaurants.
Maybe they should be marked “men” and “women.”

Homer H. Turner, Jr.
Auburn