The National Association of Town Watch has dedicated the first Tuesday in August as a nationwide opportunity for local communities to unite together to promote awareness of crime prevention efforts.

This year's National Night Out is sponsored by Trenton Emergency Management Services (TEMS). The event will be Tuesday, August 7 at the Trenton park, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

Until then, here are some questions to consider:

- Is there room for everyone?

- How can neighbors affect my "castle"?

- Can I identify compromises in my everyday routine?

- How much impact do my choices have in making me what I am?

- What do I do with the obstacles in my life?

- Can I really prepare for the unexpected?

- How dependent are police and the surrounding community upon one another?

As a community, join TEMS in addressing these topics in a fun way on August 7.

Trenton Emergency Management Services

The Bishop Althoff Assembly of the 4th Degree Knights of Columbus would like to thank everyone at the Clinton County Fair Parade on Monday July 16, who took the extra effort to stand and remove their hats as the American Flag was carried by them.

It was great to know that you too honor our country with your respect for our Flag.

Joseph A Langhauser

Faithful Navigator

Harry Potter books and movies are demon possessed and are promoting witchcraft! Harry Potter books and movies are straight from the pits of Hell and the Devil is getting worshipped!

The darkness of this occult worship is deceiving the pure innocent minds of the children! The black magic will warp the minds of the children! The brain washing of the children to make witchcraft seem good instead of evil!

Parents watch what your children read. Parents throw all of the Harry Potter books in the trash! Children don't read the Harry Potter books or your soul will be damned! Children throw the Harry Potter books in the trash then your soul will be saved!

The worshipping of witchcraft in the Harry Potter books and movies will let the demons control you. The Harry Potter books and movies are cursed and are an abomination to God!

Satan in these last days is promoting evil is good and good is evil in Harry Potter books and movies!

Worshipping witchcraft and Harry Potter books and movies is giving Lucifer the power over your mind!

I pray for the woman that wrote Harry Potter books that Jesus save her soul! She will come out of the dark world of witchcraft into the bright light of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Accept Jesus and you will have eternal life!

George Culley,

Pinckneyville

Editor's Note: Just to give you a peek at the margins of societal thought.

We lost a dear and trusted friend last Tuesday, when Paul "Bud" Strake died suddenly after a heart attack at his home here in Trenton.

If you don't recognize the name, you would probably recognize Bud's face, at least if you ever came into the Sun office.

Bud was a former owner of the Sun who stuck around to work with us after we bought the place 17 years ago. He never left.

Sybil and I are both profoundly grateful to Bud's wife, June, who shared her husband with us even after he retired. We leaned on his experience a lot over the nearly two decades that we knew him, and his death shocked us because he was such a healthy person.

I can scarcely remember Bud getting sick the entire time I've known him, and he was a faithful walker. If you don't remember seeing Bud in his familiar spot at the back of our shop in Trenton, you've probably seen him walking in the early morning hours, listening to a portable radio while completing his daily constitutional.

On the day he died, Bud wasn't on any medications at all, which is remarkable for a man of 79 years.

In grasping for metaphysical reasons why he died so suddenly, the only comfort I can find is that I know he always wanted to go quickly. Not for him was the long, slow decline of life. Bud was a man who needed to be on the move.

He preferred to stay in the background, and he managed to do so for his fifty-plus year career at the Sun. He took pride in the quality of work he produced, and I hope he was proud to be associated with the Sun. The easiest way to describe Bud is that he was "just a good guy," and if that doesn't seem like enough for some people, to me it's about the highest praise a man can receive. The world could use a few more of them.

He started working at the Sun at the age of 27, moonlighting as a linotype operator here while continuing to work for the giant Christian Board publishing company in St. Louis. It was there that he honed his linotype skills while transcribing medical textbooks.

He told me once that when former Sun owner John Glanzner offered him a partnership in the Sun, and he resigned at Christian Board, his boss laughed at him. "You're making a big mistake," the boss told him, "leaving a big company like this for a small-town newspaper."

Bud liked to point out that Christian Board went out of business a few years later, and the Sun continues to shine.

Bud was our first teacher in layout and design. He was an expert in composing newspaper pages, advertisements, flyers, and other printed materials using an old Compugraphic typesetting machine, a waxing machine, and an exacto knife.

It wasn't long after we took over that the Sun became computerized, but there were still some set-ups that Bud preferred to do the old way.

Despite having entered the printing business when hot lead was its key component, Bud always embraced technology. He was fascinated by the designs we could create using computers and cutting-edge printers, and we finally junked out old multilith offset press about ten years ago, Bud simply learned the intricacies of our new digital press, and never missed a step. Any progress that kept him out of the darkroom was good progress, in his opinion.

Mostly, Bud worked in the commercial printing part of our business, but he did a little bit of everything during the time we worked together.

At various times, he served as a courier, typesetter, proofreader, and walking dictionary. I have never known a better proofreader, and if ever I was unsure of a word, I simply hollered it out, and Bud would provide me with the correct spelling. The only word we never quite figured out was mostaccoli(?), which made frequent appearances in the old Rohling's Market advertisements. We finally decided that no one else knows how to spell it either, so what difference did it make?

He saw us at our best, and at our worst, at our most joyful, and at our most crestfallen. He watched our children grow, and paid patient attention when they would show him a crude drawing or art project they had created.

In the initial aftermath of his death, I thought a lot about my relationship with Bud. I spent a lot of time with him over the years, and I don't think either of us ever said a cross word to the other. It helped that we never discussed religion or politics. In some ways I felt like I hardly knew him, and in other ways I believe he was the best friend I had.

Through the course of our relationship, I don't think either of us felt indebted to nor owed by the other, and that's about as good a friend as you can have, the way I see it.

Sybil and I will always identify Bud with operating our old Kluge letterpress. The Kluge is a relic from days gone by, but it continues to fascinate many who walk through our doors and is still a useful tool for us in perforating and numbering raffle tickets and forms.

Bud knew the machine backwards and forwards. He knew its strengths and its limitations. There were many, many times when the clatter and whoosh of that machine, now nearly a century old, served as the background music for our workday.

On Friday, Dennis Franke, our man from the Village Scribe in New Baden, came up to try and figure out the machine. We had some raffle tickets that needed to be perforated, and with the help of an old printing buddy Dennis got the job done.

That afternoon, I walked in the back office to find Sybil sitting silently and crying. Hearing the Kluge clank in the background, she had forgotten for a moment about Bud's death.

In a strange way, I take comfort from that as well. As long as we keep the old letterpress working, our office will be happily haunted by memories of Bud.