No place for any visual filth
I appreciate the letter written by the person who noted that civility is gone. I wish to follow up on that. I am saddened by the action of the person who flies a “Expletive Biden” flag on his truck. This person spreads his visual filth in front of all who come in contact with it.
It reeks of hate speech and incites violence. It is hate speech, and there is no place for it.
What upsets me the most is that he chooses to show his ignorance of decent human behavior by showing this in front of young children at the pool as well as shopping center parking lots. He certainly has the right to display his pathetic flag in his own home.
I would be as offended if it was an “Expletive Trump” flag also. What manufacturer would also sink so low as to make such an item? It must stop.
Do we have any community standards that address this? As a person who has been fortunate to meet the many fine people of this community – who have overwhelmingly been kind, respectful and encouraging – it intensely upsets me to see our kids exposed to this visual garbage. As an educator of over 40 years, I must speak out for all who can not or are afraid to for any reason. Any ideas, commissioners, lawyers, elected officials?
Hopefully, this person would choose to deliver meals to the elderly, help those in need, pick up litter and use his truck in a positive way, thereby caring for his fellow neighbor rather than offending them.
I would urge every elected or appointed official – Republican, Democrat or other – law enforcement and pastors to take a stand against this visual filth and speak out against it with utmost force. We are better than this.
Mike Lalone, Murphy
On litterbugs and junk cars
Thanks to Glenn Kolp for the well-written guest column in the March 2 edition of the Cherokee Scout on litterbugs stealing from us. I’d like to add to that.
A couple of weeks ago, we drove to Alexander’s. I commented on how beautiful the road was and how it would be nice to live there. Then we realized why. Not a single rusted-out car or truck was to be seen, nor a single property strewn with junk. Surely there must be a code prohibiting these things.
When we moved to Cherokee County, had we realized the decades of accumulated junk is not everywhere in these mountains, more than likely we’d have looked elsewhere. It’s embarrassing. Frustrating.
I lived in Hawaii, a place known for its beauty, for decades. Let me say these mountains are no less beautiful.
Trash on the roadside destroys the beauty surrounding us. It makes us no better than city dwellers. Yard junk devalues our properties. It keeps companies that would bring badly needed employment and tax revenues from establishing businesses here. It perpetuates the stereotype that people living in these mountains come straight out of the movie Deliverance. We are not that.
Trash, property values and business growth, on some level, go hand in hand. Do the county commissioners realize this? Doesn’t the fact that the county commissioners continue to allow this show weakness?
Are they really doing what is right for the well-being of the county? Aren’t laws and codes established for the good of the people? Is it they fear political blowback?
How about we make Cherokee County more desirable? Why not have an amnesty for junk at the landfill? How about they find a way for our county to be as beautiful as it really is?
David Bellino, Murphy
Climate needs action today
The laws of physics give us the facts. There are certain gases in our atmosphere, called greenhouse gases, that, because of their chemical configuration, trap heat.
Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, and water vapor are the principal ones. As these gases increase, they trap more heat, and our earth warms. The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide – 100 million tons daily.
Using well-known physics, this equates to trapping enough extra energy in our atmosphere to be the equivalent of the energy from exploding 400,000 Hiroshima-type bombs per day 365 days per year. Our average temperatures have increased 3 degrees F over the past 100 years. If we believe in science, it all makes sense.
NOAA, NASA, the Hadley Center, Berkley Earth, World Meteorological Association and every other major center that measures Earth’s temperatures all agree on the steady increases in temperatures. Could the increase in temperature be due to other causes?
The factors that control our temperature are the sun activity, distance of Earth from the sun and the tilt of Earth’s axis, which is what caused the ice ages, volcanic activity and greenhouse gases. All the causes except greenhouse gases have shown essentially no change over the last 100 years.
And what do the experts in climate science all around the world say? The most recent search of peer reviewed articles-the gold standard for scientists-showed that almost 99.9 percent of those reviewed agreed on human caused climate change.
The best climate scientists in the world are involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control, and they say now that it is unequivocal that the increase in temperatures are due to humans.
Dr. Vernon Dixon, Hiawassee, Ga.