Letters to the Editor – July 8, 2015
Dog Days
On July 6th Earth reaches “Aphelion” at 94,506,507 miles, its farthest distance from the sun all year. You might ask, “Why isn’t it cooler?”
The answer is that during the summer the northern hemisphere is tilted 23.5 degrees towards the sun. What affects our temperature the most is the direct angle at which sunlight strikes the ground. Also, our short nights don’t allow time for the heat that’s built up during the day to radiate into space. We wake up and it’s still hot!
This direct sunlight is the reason we have six weeks of uncomfortable, steamy weather during July and August.
The ancient Greeks called this time of year, the 40 days from July 3rd to August 11th, “Dog Days.” They believed that the brilliant star “Sirius”, the Dog star, in the constellation of Canis Major, rising with and adding its heat to that of the sun, helped to scorch the Earth, causing dogs to go mad and making daily life miserable for everyone. And 2500 years later, the celestial canine is still heating things up!
Stay cool, everyone, and enjoy “Dog Days.”
Francis Parnell
Darlington, S.C.
Resident opposes same sex marriage
I think I have a message to tell. I am a fifth of sixth generation farmer on the same land in Darlington County and have become pretty religious the last several years.
In Genesis 17:15-19 it says, “God said to Abraham, ‘You must no longer call your wife Sarai; from now on her name will be Sarah. I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will become the mother of nations, and there will be kings among her descendents.’ Abraham bowed down with his face touching the ground, but he began to laugh when he thought, “Can a man have a child when he is one hundred years old? Can Sarah have a child at ninety?” He asked God, “Why not let Ishmael be my heir?” (Ishmael was Abraham’s son by another woman, as was then a common practice to produce an heir).
After a short time Abraham was visited by three men, one being God and two angels. They said that Sarah would have a son by the time they came back the next year. The three men were going to Sodom and Gomorrah where they would destroy the cities because of their sin. (Genesis 18).
The angels arrived in Sodom in the evening, and met a man named Lot there who invited them to stay at his house. “Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom – both young and old – surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them” (Genesis 19:1-5) This was the sin the angels spoke of.
In Leviticus 18, Moses was giving the Law to the Israelites in the desert after they had been freed from slavery in Egypt. One of the laws says, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does a woman; that is detestable” (Leviticus 18:22) It also says, “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these acts, for that is how the pagans made themselves unclean, those pagans who lived in the land before you and whom the Lord is punishing the land and making it unclean, but you must not do them. All of you, whether Israelites or foreigners living with you, must keep the Lord’s laws and commands, and then the land will not reject you, as it rejected the pagans who lived there before you” (Leviticus 18:24-28)
Hopefully by now you can see where I am coming from. Now I will attempt to explain where I am going with this. All this is from the New Testament of the Bible. This is what God said. If you have a bible, you can read this on your own or you may have already read this.
I am writing this for those who have not gone to Sunday school and have no idea who God is and what God asked us to do. Don’t get me wrong, I am not the “bible beater” that is trying to save or condemn you, but I do care about my nation.
This is what Paul says in Romans 1:18-25 some 2000 years after the verses from the Old Testament. “God’s anger is revealed from heaven against all the sin and evil of the people whose evil ways prevent the truth from being known. God punishes them, because what can be known about God is plain to them, for God himself made it plain. Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made. So those people have no excuse at all! They know God, but they do not give him the honor that belongs to him, nor do they thank him. Instead, their thoughts have become complete nonsense, and their empty minds are filled with darkness. They say they are wise, but they are fools; 23 instead of worshiping the immortal God, they worship images made to look like mortals or birds or reptiles. And so God has given those people over to do the filthy things their hearts desire, and they do shameful things with each other. They exchange the truth about God for a lie; they worship and serve what God has created instead of the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever!”
I believe that “The Left” liberal politicians, judges, and college professors have done this very thing. Now, it was Paul who was speaking to the Romans, so I’m not sure that God said all that Paul wrote directly, but if you have a bible you can read these things. If you don’t, I recommend the Good News Bible in English.
To my knowledge there is not one nation in the history of the world that has been allowed to exist once they have taken up the practice of homosexuality and same sex marriage. We are doing all the things God hates and we as a nation seem proud of it and advertise that we do these things. I do not know what hand God will use to bring us back to our knees but I know who is not helping and he is our spineless President.
I have said all I have to say.
Johnny Ross
Darlington, S.C.
