Good AM, folks!
Sorry for the belated posting. Yesterday was busy and long. Sarah is happily settling into UNC. OT was right in that the place was a madhouse, but we navigated just fine. I had never gone anywhere but the Planetarium, enjoyed walking around the campus, and eating at a bar on Franklin St.
Arthur, thank you for the bar recommendation. We will try it. Perhaps you can meet us there. I will not discuss my pet bete noir.
Glad to hear Sarah is nicely installed at Carrboro College. Susan is coping a bit better?
ReplyDeleteSusan is coping much better. She saw Sarah in her new quarters, and saw how happy she is. She, her son Shane, and I returned to WS, had a nice dinner and drinks in the River Birch bar. Now, Susan is immersed in preparations for school, marriage, change of residence. It will be a busy fall.
DeleteCorrespondent of the Week for Aug. 19: 'Animal House' rerun
ReplyDeleteYou have to hand it to the members of the national GOP for stubbornness. They are like a rich-boy college fraternity who, after presiding over an extended drunken party at their frat house, is waking up bleary-eyed amid the smoldering rubble of broken furniture, littered floors, cracked walls and failing ceilings, and complaining that the university is taking too long to clean up.
Their solution: "More beer!"
JAMES KEVIN BOKENO
Advance
One more nail
DeleteDisappointment is too mild a word to express my thoughts on House Speaker Thom Tillis' choice of Ray Covington as the "conservationist" on the fracking board ("Tillis appointment mocks fracking process," July 20). How can the owner of NC Oil & Gas vote in the best interest of the health of our citizens, when such a vote might cost him profits for his company?
The board was already skewed toward the fracking business. Now we see one more nail driven into the coffin of sound governance. North Carolina can be pro-business without throwing out safeguards for our health and environment.
MARTHA KENNEDY
Winston-Salem
"Caring"
I pondered the letter "Being looked after" (Aug. 14). I read it over and over again, trying to understand the writer's fear.
She notes a CBS poll that suggests that women will vote for President Barack Obama because he seems to "care" more than Mitt Romney, and she fears that this is an indication that people want to be looked after rather than accepting responsibility for themselves.
I suspect that the women polled don't think the president would take care of them — they think that the president cares about them. One certainly wouldn't vote for a candidate based on the belief that he would care less .
But the main point is that the writer's fear is pure paranoia. We are far from being a "nanny state." Freedom and individual responsibility are still important to most Americans and are still rewarded.
She worries that "many women are swallowing the bait," but it is she who has swallowed the bait, she who has adopted the pessimistic fear that is the Republican Party's driving force — pessimism, because its members seem to think that their fellow Americans are evil, stupid, lazy and weak; fear because the only vision they have is to keep something from happening — keep people from receiving health care or equal rights — they never try to make something positive happen themselves.
I'm voting for Obama, not because he will take care of me, but because he cares about America — and so do I.
JANE FREEMONT GIBSON
Winston-Salem
Brave people
DeleteWe want to comment on the brave and courageous people, some disabled, who spoke to the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners on Aug. 13. They were asking the county to loan CenterPoint Human Services money to help restore cuts to mental health, developmental disability and substance-abuse services. You see, the disabled are in a fight for their very existence. They don't want anything any different than the rest of us — they want to be happy and fulfilled. They just can't do it by themselves, so they come to the commissioners for help.
A couple of other counties have already committed to the loan. We would have thought that as innovative and positive as the commissioners have been in making our city better, they would have been the lead in helping the disabled.
Our daughter, Traci, attends Forsyth Industrial Systems. This is not a day care. It is a program that teaches her life skills, job skills and socialization to fit into a society that sometimes is uncomfortable with people who are different. The accomplishments are endless. We saw a hyperactive, developmentally disabled child grow into an adult. She has been there 17 years, since high school, and won't miss a day.
The list of agencies with cuts is frightening. Families cannot carry this burden alone. Please, as a community, support the funding for CenterPoint. It is a loan .
Oh, by the way, Traci spoke at the meeting. It was one sentence. She had practiced all week.
MIKE AND TAMRA SMITHSON
Winston-Salem
"Stiff penalties are needed"
The article "Nation focuses on gun-rights debate" (Aug. 12) will certainly generate many responses. So I will focus on one comment in the block "How to buy a gun in North Carolina."
True, a permit to buy a handgun may be obtained from the sheriff's office upon payment of $5 and a background check. This is a onetime permit that must be surrendered to the dealer at time of purchase. The next-to-last sentence implies that this procedure also applies to obtaining a concealed-carry permit. Not so.
This permit requires an $80 fee, an eight-page application, and about three months' wait. Four of those pages require applicants to give permission for the state mental institutions to check and certify that they have not been treated at any of those facilities or satellites.
Thanks to the efforts of the late Sen. Ham Horton, the concealed-carry permit may be used as a buy permit. The concealed-carry permit must be renewed, fee and all, every five years. Any violation of laws or regulations results in suspension of the permit.
Over 40,000 laws and regulations govern firearm purchases and ownership. That seems to be a good deal of "infringement" on a constitutional right. Some justified, some not. The problem is a lack of sufficiently stiff penalties for the criminal use of a firearm.
CHARLIE WEAVER
Winston-Salem
Ryan's Christianity
DeleteVice presidential candidate Paul Ryan claims he is a devout Catholic. On the basis of a long and close reading of the New Testament, and specifically on the basis of what Jesus says about the poor, I think Ryan's budget proposals can be shown to be those of neither a devout Catholic nor a devout Christian nor any kind of Christian at all. And specifically on his claim to be a devout Catholic, I would like to see any text in Aquinas that is consistent with Ryan's callous attitude to the poor.
MARCUS HESTER
PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHILOSOPHY
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
Winston-Salem
"Sum It Up"
Are you satisfied with the size of our federal government?
Respond to letters@wsjournal.com and put "Sum It Up" in the subject header. Only signed entries, please — no anonymous ones. Briefer responses receive preference in print.