The News Courier encourages letters to the editor. Submissions should be no more than 400 words and include name, address and telephone number for verification. Submissions that do not meet requirements are subject to editing. Writers are limited to one published letter every 30 days. Send letters to P.O. Box 670, Athens AL 35613 or email to adam@athensnews-courier.com. The deadlines are noon on Mondays and Wednesdays.

We must protect the planet

Dear Editor:

When I was a young student, we debated about what was a living organism. Today we know, at least for Earth, life is DNA.

Life is one molecule high, one wide, and one deep. If DNA survives, life on Earth survives. If it does not, Earth becomes a dead planet.

What we do to our planet does not need to overcome the mass of the whale, the strength of the elephant or the ubiquity of the microbe to destroy life. It needs only to overcome the fragility of a molecule.

We likewise envision our democracy to have the combined strength of all our 320 million people. Actually, it rests on the good will and the skills of a tiny fraction of that number of people.

Just 218 representatives, 51 senators, five Supreme Court justices and the president (less than one person per million) control our federal government. Even more alarming, its rules of operation allow far fewer people even than that to paralyze or to hijack it. We need only one or two election cycles to destroy our own democracy.

Our environment, our social networks, our democracy and our international community may seem like behemoths immune from our puny actions. They are not. Each of them is precariously balanced, and we mortal and imperfect human beings indeed can move them in ways that could be self-annihilating.

It is time that we replace humility with an understanding of the enormous power we wield, of how much we can affect the planet on which we live and the lives around us. It is time that we act responsibly.

Sincerely,

Ken Hines

Chairman,

Limestone County Democrats

Thanks to Sheriff Blakely

Editor’s note: The following letter was sent by Mary Alice Hughes to Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely. The author gave The News Courier permission to reprint it.

Dear Sheriff Blakely:

I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate the years you have spent as our country sheriff. We have lived in Limestone County for the last 17 years, and I worked in the county for a number of years before that.

In those years, this county has felt safe and secure for me and my family. Thank you.

My grandson was a resident in what we called your “hotel” for several months. He was a difficult young man, and I expected a lot of complaints about everything. One day, I asked him how he was being treated.

“They treat us good,” he said. “As long as we show them respect, they do the same to us.”

And about the food, “What did you have today?” Then, he named off a good menu.

“It was good and they gave us plenty of it.”

In my opinion, your department is to be complimented on a job well done.

Sincerely,

Mary Alice Hughes

Athens