No business interfering

By: Letters To the editor | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: April 20, 2009

The Alcoa-owned dams that created High Rock Lake, Tuckertown Reservoir and Badin Lake were financed with private funds over 50 years ago and the state of North Carolina has no business usurping those investors ("Valuable Resources," April 11). Just because liberal Democratic politicians don't think it right for a private entity to sell electricity at a profit on the open market doesn't make it wrong. The concept of making money off your investments gives investors the incentive to take risks.

Not that it matters, but the privately owned dams have created many other tangible benefits to taxpayers in the state: the high land values of lakefront properties; the clean, renewable electricity; the recreational opportunities of the lakes; and the businesses that rely on all of this.

STEVE AUFFINGER

Clemmons

Thoughts on sports

About the objections to the Journal's sports section, what if the paper was to just put in small pictures and a listing of scores, would that suffice? Probably not.

Looking at the April 12 PARADE magazine and the salaries of the sports players, I am astonished that someone gets so much money for playing a game. An MRI technician who could be saving a life gets only .14 percent of the salary of a baseball player.

I have family and friends who are into sports, but real life is not a sport. As I once read, the important things in life are not things.

JERE DAILEY

Advance

The nature of aging

Thank you for the April 7 article "Before and After" by Janice Gaston. I hope this is one of a series about the nature of aging; otherwise, we are left asking "Is that all there is?"

It is precisely this incomplete picture of the nature of aging that causes people to fear and try to deny the changes occurring. Subsequently, we have a whole industry devoted to anti-aging procedures. Maggie Kuhn, the founder of the Gray Panthers, said that "Old age is not a disease ... " And, anecdotally, we have only to remember some of the wonderful accounts by your reporter Kim Underwood and others to answer the question with a resounding "No!"

I would hope that you will dig into the psycho-social aspects of aging, as we are more than our bodies. There are many good books by gerontologists and local professionals who are capable of giving information on all aspects of aging. I'll be watching for part two.

NANCY M. HALL

Winston-Salem

Ignored

Well over a majority of the readers of the Journal are Christians; so why ignore the most important Christian day of the year? There was nothing anywhere in the April 12 paper remembering Easter Sunday. I am disappointed to find that a good newspaper like yours would ignore such a special day.

MARGARET H. MOORE

Advance

Reminded of fable

After reading the April 13 letter "Run out," complaining about Journal coverage of UNC Chapel Hill, I was reminded of the Aesop fable The Fox and the Grapes. In fact, I think I may have heard the writer proclaiming, "They're probably sour anyway," as Coach Roy Williams and the Tar Heels were cutting down the nets in Detroit.

JORDAN SMITH

Winston-Salem