Letters to the Editor: A ballpark, a banned book, a Burlison bill, bullying and a balloon

Great American Pastime may not be great investment

Hammons Field in the summer — the smell of peanuts, hotdogs, and the taxpayers' dollars going up in smoke. Before we invest at least $16 million, perhaps we should check with MSU to see how it's working out with Great Southern Bank Arena (formerly JQH Arena) or the other investors who lost money after Mr. Hammons' company went bankrupt upon his death.

Bob Grand, Springfield

A Look at "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"

After news circulated about Willard banning the Jesse Andrew book about two teenage boys dealing with the impending death of a classmate from leukemia, I decided to read it. As I read the book, it was obvious that there was an abundance of inappropriate language focusing mainly on sexual terms.

Throughout the book, the dialogue including the language was not for shock value but to indicate how adolescent boys deal with uncomfortable situations. Explicit sexual acts were not included in the book. It was sexual words used as adjectives when the teen’s immaturity lacked the ability to find words that really described their thoughts about this traumatic loss of a fellow student.

The expletives were NOT mature content; they were showing the feelings that they could not face. Andrews found a way to create a word picture of boys asea in lifetime loss and how it fits in their lives. The main characters, Greg and Earl, were not outstanding students; they were outside of the mainstream of the high school.

Students would probably not be scandalized by the overuse of expletives — they would recognize it as common when others lack the willingness or ability to come up with “the right words.”

Kathleen Murnan, Springfield

Congressional Republicans courting disaster

It seems clear from the GOP leadership in the House that simple governing is a skill that seems to be very elusive.

The new power in the House obviously belongs to those Republicans who are the most radical. Their power was revealed in a three-day struggle to elect a Speaker, a conflict not seen in a century. More demonstrations of that power followed in their first proposed legislation.

Congressman (Eric) Burlison’s first bill was an effort to repeal the National Firearms Act of 1934. This would allow legal ownership of machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and silencers. The 2017 Las Vegas killing of 60 will become the norm. The Las Vegas shooter’s bump stock mirrored a fully-automatic weapon, so expect a geometric explosion of the numbers of dead.

The Republicans are also determined to ignore the debt limit, if they do not get what they want, demanding cuts they will not identify. Gutting Medicare and Social Security IS on the list. Their party’s history since 1935 proves it. Eliminating the IRS and replacing our progressive taxes with a 30% tax on everything is another idea. The only reasonable expectation is a disastrous impact upon the average taxpayer. Instead of the current rates, single taxpayers earning $170,000 OR LESS would now pay 30% more on everything. Milk, clothes, dinner at a restaurant, cars, tools, everything would jump by 30%. They might add a year-end refund, a paltry accommodation when a Missourian making $25,000/year is just trying to make it to the end of each week.Congressman Burlison will give us a breach of the debt limit, its own financial disaster all by itself, many more deaths from machine guns, the damage to Medicare and Social Security and their not so brilliant tax plan. The fact is silence is acceptance. Time to call.

Robert Haslag, Nixa

Missouri legislators are bullying trans children

I am a parent of a transgender teen. We are a family that is a target of legislation created by Ash Grove Sen. Mike Moon. My family has deep ties to the Springfield area, and my first ancestor settled in Missouri in 1806. My mother and I are caretakers of our family mausoleum in a small town near Springfield, where I am the fourth generation of women to be baptized. My husband and I are both professional people, with strong connections to our community. However, due to the wave of attacks on transgender children coming from our Missouri state capitol, we have created a plan to flee the state, something we do not want to do.

It was shocking to us when our child came to us, and told us that she was transgender. We had a plan for how our life would be, and an image of her, and never in a million years expected this. There were no signs that we could tell, but looking back, now we see them. She had a very happy childhood, but when puberty came along, it was not tolerable for her. This is why we immediately sought medical care for our child. It is a process that has taken years and has involved careful and private consideration.

If your child came to you with a broken leg, you would fix it — right? Or would you tell your kid to live with that broken leg and wait until they are 18 in order to be seen by a doctor? Imagine the pain they would go through if you waited to set the broken leg. That is what Sen. Mike Moon and others think is appropriate when it comes to transgender children. That is against medical advice, and a parent's loving heart.

And yet, legislators are creating bills in the Missouri House and Senate to bully transgender children. Thirty bills in total targeting transgender kids are in the Missouri Legislature in 2023 alone. These bills are governmental overreach, and show Mike Moon’s unhealthy obsession with transgender children. Every week, families like ours go to Jefferson City to plead with Moon and others to allow us to keep our rights. These are the families that are doing the right thing by living wholesome lives, standing by their children, and making sure they don’t live a life on the margins of society, or possibly even dead on the street.

I woke up in tears yesterday morning thinking of my mother, still living in Missouri. I cried thinking of my grandparents grave, and who will tend it when we flee the state?

Rene Freels, St. Louis

Boyle's La tells us 'balloonacy' was inflated

The sheer lunacy and hysteria created by the Chinese balloon crossing over into United States airspace should be an educational moment for Americans, it will not however. More than anything, I was amused by the commentary of so-called experts describing how the balloon could carry heavy payloads, even “thousands” of pounds. It could not. In fact, with a little science, one could determine almost exactly its actual weight as it crossed our sky. There is a principal called Boyle’s Law in play here that applies to balloons.

On October 14, 2012, when Felix Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of 128,100 feet setting world records for a freefall and the highest manned balloon flight, he did so by jumping out of a capsule that weighed 2,900 pounds and a balloon that weighed 3,708 pounds that was filled with 180,000 cubic feet of helium upon launch that expanded to 30 million cubic feet at its highest altitude. To get Baumgartner up to the stratosphere, his team had to construct a helium balloon that would expand to the size of 33 football pitches made out of material that was 10 times thinner than a sandwich bag. At launch, the balloon envelope stood 55 stories tall.

Here is where Boyle’s Law is beneficial to our understanding of this comparatively tiny Chinese balloon. Simple LiDAR (laser ranging) scans of the balloon could tell you the exact size of the balloon itself. That would tell you the volume of helium in the balloon. The balloon would establish an equilibrium in the atmosphere based upon its expansion capacity and the relative weight of atmospheric gases it was displacing as it rose into the atmosphere eventually establishing a constant altitude that equaled the weight of atmosphere displaced versus the weight of the balloon and the helium contained therein. Since you would know the altitude and the size of the balloon and how much helium it was carrying, you would know the weight of the entire balloon and its payload, which given its size, would not be much. When this “balloonacy” afflicting Americans goes away, I suspect that the Chinese version of why it was launched in the first place will turn out to be more accurate.

James Fossard, Springfield

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Letters to the Editor for Feb. 12A ballpark, a banned book, a Burlison bill, bullying and a big balloon