Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409240003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This newspaper is way off base in its attempt to encourage the theft of the beloved Virginia Museum of Natural History from its home in Martinsville. Just as Thomas Jefferson had the foresight to locate The University in the hills of rural Albemarle County, Dr. Noel Boaz had the vision to start the museum in Martinsville. This humble beginning forced the research-oriented institution to become one of outreach. It has grown and prospered in our fair city, and is the nucleus of an institution that's been described by the American Association of Museums as ``a model for state museums.''
Our museum without walls, due to its location, was forced to be an institution that takes its programs and exhibits to people, instead of opening the doors and expecting people to come to it. As a result, the museum provided services in 1993 to more than 900,000 citizens across Virginia.
If allowed to progress as planned, this museum will benefit all Virginians by increasing tourism to the Martinsville area from all over the region. With an adequate facility, the Virginia Museum of Natural History will draw visitors of a magnitude similar to the North Carolina Zoo, which is located in a small city along U.S. 220 about 90 miles south of Martinsville.
It's very unfair to have the cultural diversity of our city threatened by the change in funding status proposed by an Allen administration study commission. It's even more unfair for larger, wealthier and less economically distressed areas to try to take advantage of this situation.
I'd like to see Roanoke support its sister city to the south in ensuring that less densely populated areas of the state enjoy the cultural diversity of the large metropolitan areas of Virginia.
MARK A. CRABTREE
City Councilman
MARTINSVILLE
Believers in creation have an answer
FRANK MUNLEY, associate professor of physics at Roanoke College, clad in the mantle of quasi-infallibility, delivered what he presumably thought was a definitive rebuke to those ``intellectually lazy'' creationists who conveniently invoke a ``God of the gaps'' when they cannot explain creation scientifically (Sept. 3 letter to the editor, ``Invoking a `God of the gaps' is just intellectually lazy'').
I belong to the category of humble readers who cannot totally understand and/or accept his rather haughty lecturing on evolutionism, sprinkled with fancy references to thermodynamics.
The entire debate boils down to a dispute between believers and nonbelievers in God, with Munley clearly belonging in the latter, small but very influential, camp. He considers it an ``audacious attempt'' to put creationism on the same pedestal with scientific evolutionism. His belief, if stripped from the fancy trimmings of his phraseology, can be reduced to a single word: disbelief. To him, God is the product of thousands of years of desperate, human imaginative effort.
He has a right to believe or disbelieve. While admitting that man cannot prove God's existence, I see, with uncounted millions in the world, the hands of a supreme being everywhere. Just think:
The whole world's technology, if combined, would be unable to produce a single seed from which a blade of grass could grow, or a minuscule egg that could give life to a tiny worm. How then was nature created with its incredible variety, crowned by man himself? How did the unfathomable universe come into being? How did things start to move? Yes, who or what caused the first motion?
In physics, motion cannot occur without a force causing it. Does Munley think the first motion was developed by evolution? Does he have an acceptable answer to this? I doubt it; scientific mumbo jumbo wouldn't do. But those believing in creation have an answer.
To those who think that God is but our end product, a question begs for answer: Whose end products are we?
STEPHEN SISA
HUDDLESTON
Free-spending liberals vs. North
NO ONE wants to admit it, but our country is on the edge of bankruptcy. Most of our representatives in Washington refuse to face that reality, and go merrily on their free-spending ways as the debt grows bigger. The press has blamed every president from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan to George Bush for the debt problem.
But let's get something straight: No president has ever appropriated a dime! Only Congress can do that, and it has done it to irresponsible excess from the '60s to the present. Only Congress holds the purse strings, and it is guilty of spending wildly, long after the purse is empty. The only possibility for saving us from bankruptcy is to send current representatives home and replace them with responsible people who will put a stop to this spending foolishness.
Oliver North made members of Congress very uncomfortable when appearing before them as a witness. He'll make them even more uncomfortable when he sits among them. He'll challenge them to give up their pet perks and their pork. The free-spending liberals don't want him in their ``club.'' They're afraid he'll end their game as they know it.
North will be a voice for those who pay their bills and Congress', too. We need him in the Senate.
RUSS COOPER
HARDY
Those pennies add up for taxpayers
ON SEPT. 13, I was at a service station in Southwest Roanoke, using a self-service pump to fill my car with gasoline.
While there, a blue Dodge Dynasty, with a United States government license tag, pulled up to the fulI-service island. An attendant serviced the vehicle, while the driver went inside and had a cup of coffee. The driver was a male, middle-age person, with no apparent physical disabilities.
His choice of full service rather than self-service cost the taxpayer a minimum premium of 10 cents a gallon. This was paid for by a federal credit card.
Certainly this event, and similar actions by government employees, in no way helps to reduce or contain the national debt.
WILLIAM P. TALBOTT
GLASGOW
Use available power more efficiently
``THE VIRGINIA Sierra Club's policy on power lines is sadly lacking.'' That is the type of propaganda I would expect to hear from a political figure or a closed-minded economist. In Bill Tanger's Sept. 13 letter to the editor ``Conservation and power are needed,'' the tone resembles that of our anti-environment governor and a businessman with no true concern for our state's environmental well-being.
Transmitting as much power as possible to our region has been chosen as a priority over using what power we already have in the most efficient way possible. The latter is the apparent view of the Sierra Club, which makes a lot of sense.
When you're fighting an uphill battle, it's always handy to pull out the old, trusty not-in-my-back-yard finger to point at the opposition. Well, people with true environmental concerns prefer not in anybody's back yard. Prevention of a power line is possible if Appalachian Power Co. would put half of the money and energy it has already wasted in pro-power-line propaganda into promoting energy efficiency.
GLEN R. RADFORD
TROUTVILLE
Congress must play by its own rules
THIS WEEK, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee sent to the Senate floor legislation that would fully cover members of Congress under the labor laws they pass. A similar bill passed the House on Aug. 10 (427-4). Not surprisingly, Congress has historically exempted itself from coverage under these laws, including the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Because Congress passed only partial coverage for its employees under the Civil Rights Act, congressional employees registering violations under the act can only hope to be referred to ``counseling.'' Congress failed to build in the same remedies (jury trials, punitive and compensatory damages) available to private-sector employees.
More recently, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, but only partially covered its own employees because it didn't provide them with the remedies given private-sector employees. Members of Congress have also exempted themselves from the minimum-wage law regarding congressional employees.
Whether members of Congress should be expected to comply with laws they pass shouldn't even be an issue. Of course, they should! Arguments that separation of powers and the speech-and-debate clause in the Constitution exempt them from covering their employees are, at best, weak. It's unthinkable that our forefathers, while writing documents that would guide our nation, ever thought that members of Congress were not created equal and, therefore, shouldn't be held accountable for actions toward their employees.
BRUCE M. WOOD
Legislative Affairs Director
ANNE L. LANDEY
President
Roanoke Valley Society for Human Resource Management
ROANOKE
by CNB