Nov. 7's Letters to the Editor

Dear Edi­tor,

A cou­ple of weeks ago I stopped my car at the cross­walk in front of the Post Office to let 2 women cross the street. As the ladies began to cross the street, a tanker truck came rolling down the street and did not bother to slow down or stop, even though it was obvi­ous that traf­fic mov­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion had stopped for these pedes­tri­ans. Addi­tion­ally, a few weeks ago I was attempt­ing to cross the street at the square, with my baby in a stroller, and had to wait for vehi­cles to go through before I could com­pletely cross. This occurred when the light was green in my direc­tion and the pedes­trian cross­ing light was lit — both of which should have made it safe for me to cross the street.

I have noticed both of these prob­lems many times in Mt. Gilead and it makes me sad. Pedes­tri­ans have the right of way — whether they are cross­ing at a cross­walk or not. They def­i­nitely have the right of way when there are cross­walk lines painted on the street. I am con­stantly amazed that the fine folks of our com­mu­nity do not look for pedes­tri­ans in our cross­walks. Is every­one is such a hurry that they can­not look out for the wel­fare of a pedes­trian? The cross­walk near the Post Office is one of the worst places in the Vil­lage to cross the street. Since there is not a stop light in that area most motorists don’t give the cross­walk a sec­ond thought.

I want to urge all dri­vers in our com­mu­nity to slow down and pay atten­tion before a pedes­trian is injured just for cross­ing the street. How can we encour­age tourism if the guests in our com­mu­nity do not feel safe cross­ing the street while vis­it­ing our won­der­ful down­town businesses?

Thank you, Angela Seg­raves, Mt Gilead

To the Editor,

I am writ­ing in response to the let­ter writ­ten by Darl Mills oppos­ing early vot­ing. Once again Mr. Mills finds it nec­es­sary to insult those that may not agree with him. A few weeks ago Mr. Mills called the cit­i­zens of Mor­row county “idiots”. In his most recent let­ter, early vot­ers were accused of being “not smart enough” to cast a bal­lot. He actu­ally encour­aged peo­ple not to bother to vote! What are you afraid of Mr. Mills?

From the tone of the let­ter, the main fear seems to be that lib­er­als and “pseudo intel­lec­tu­als” would have the gall to cast a vote. Shouldn’t every Amer­i­can cit­i­zen be encour­aged to vote? Isn’t that what “those who have served” fought for? By “those that have served”, I assume that he means not only those in the mil­i­tary, but suf­fragettes and civil rights work­ers. The argu­ment that those vot­ing early are not cast­ing a thought out bal­lot is just plain wrong. Early vot­ers can cast their bal­lot from home or go to the board of elec­tions, for many that is a longer trip than to their local polling place. Early vot­ing is not just a con­ve­nience. For many peo­ple it may mean the dif­fer­ence between being able to vote or not.

While I can think of numer­ous sce­nar­ios where early vot­ing would be pru­dent, let me give you a real life exam­ple. My hus­band is an RN at a hos­pi­tal in Colum­bus. His shift on Elec­tion Day is from 6:45 am to 7:15 pm. That means he leaves home before the polls open and will not return until well after the polls have closed. He holds two bach­e­lor degrees. Cer­tainly this does not put him in the cat­e­gory of “not smart enough”? And his 21 years of mil­i­tary ser­vice does put him in the cat­e­gory of those who have defended the right for every cit­i­zen to vote.

Where does your cri­te­ria end? No early votes. Then no absen­tee votes. Then per­haps no one under a cer­tain age, lib­eral thinkers, minori­ties, women? Should we go back in time or take a more mod­ern approach? Dis­cour­age peo­ple from vot­ing or encour­age every­one to vote? I vote for the latter.

And yes, we voted early.

Lisa Townsend, Cardington

Dear Edi­tor,

On Sat­ur­day, Nov. 3, 2012, the United Way of Mor­row County hosted the Harlem Ambas­sadors pro­fes­sional show bas­ket­ball team for a night of high-flying slam dunks, hilar­i­ous com­edy, and feel-good fam­ily entertainment.

The Harlem Ambas­sadors would like to extend a spe­cial thank you to event orga­niz­ers Jodi Hayes and Steve Keen who planned and pro­moted the game. The Mor­row County Heroes proved to be an ener­getic, enthu­si­as­tic and chal­leng­ing team and we thank all of the play­ers for their good sports­man­ship. The event would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the sup­port and gen­eros­ity of local com­mu­nity spon­sors, the United Way of Mor­row County mem­bers, and the event volunteers.

The Harlem Ambas­sadors thank the com­mu­nity of Mt. Gilead for its warm hos­pi­tal­ity and look for­ward to return­ing to Mt. Gilead in the future!

Best regards, Dale Moss, Harlem Ambas­sadors Pres.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Nov 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.