I had one of the major scares of my adult life recently. I turned off of I-20 east at Pell City around 2 p.m. and was greeted by an alarm telling me of a chemical weapons accident at the Anniston Army Depot. After too many disconcerting minutes, I was able to find out that I was reacting to a “false alarm.” I suppose that should have comforted me, but what was enforced was what I have suspected for months: we are quite simply not prepared to deal with the real thing.I could not hear the instructions clearly. That was disturbing enough, but I soon had other unsettling questions as well. Do drivers headed into Oxford/Anniston know that an incinerator even exists?
How can survival instructions be followed if they cannot be heard? With the added danger of “false alarms” will we now believe the real thing should it happen? What about the children on school buses should the real thing happen around 3 p.m. on a school day? What about the elderly who are unable to fend for themselves?
I have always believed this area to be ill prepared for the inherent hazards of an incinerator in our densely populated communities. Sadly, I now have a personal experience that suggests that I am indeed correct.
Steven J. Whitton
Jacksonville
Reparations
About reparations for slavery: who will get them, only those with documented proof their ancestors were slaves? Will there be a cut-off day of say, January 1, 2003 where blacks born after this date cannot collect? If so, why? won’t they too still be descendants of slaves? Will black slave owners pay reparations or receive them or both?Will blacks who have come to America since the end of slavery be able to collect reparations? What about native Americans? How about the people the native Americans displaced here when they came across the Bering Straits? What about the descendants of free blacks, will they too collect reparations? Less than 10 percent of the people in America owned slaves so, who will pay this make-believe debt, their descendants or all Americans?
Will Atlanta get reparations for the burning of their city? Will Southerners at large get back family lands, homes and possessions that were stolen from them through high and unfair taxes after the Civil War?
There are many questions to be asked and answered before anyone gets a penny for slavery. I think on a personal level the solution would be for everyone of us who owned a slave to go to them and pay them reparations and get on with being an American.
This is how I plan to pay any slave that I have owned in my life time. As for the slaves who have long since passed away they can take up the matter with their old masters and God in heaven.
Billy E. Price
Ashville
Hospice
In this busy world of ours, it’s gratifying when people take the time to help others. It’s for this reason that I’m writing to thank Bud Kitchen for making possible the “Day of Caring.”Due to scheduling conflicts our partners, the Anniston Museum of Natural History and I mutually agreed to have our “Day of Caring” on July 23.
These wonderful people, Gil Stringfellow, Marie Faulkner, Rachel Smart and Susan Robertson, spent the day traveling with our nurses and visiting our patients. The feedback by the volunteers and our nurses can only be described as a “total success.” In fact, three of the four have applied to become Hospice of East Alabama volunteers.
It’s great to have United Way of East Central Alabama and the Anniston Museum of Natural History on our team.
Ed Dorn
Hospice of East Alabama
Anniston
