Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 13, 1994 TAG: 9408050002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
My repeated suggestion, even at this late date, is to erect the conference center behind the hotel where Wells Avenue is being relocated. Surely, the steel structure can be unbolted and unwelded, then dismounted and re-erected (like an Erector set) 50 or 100 feet out of the front yard and into the back yard where it belongs! It will cost money to do this, but will prevent the architectural and landscaping abomination now under way. And the new idea of having two entrances to the hotel is confusing, to say the least.
I don't know who selected the hotel's front yard for the conference center, but it was a mistake of the first magnitude, and should be corrected before a roof is attached to the annex. A delay of a few months in the hotel's reopening is not going to be fatal to it or to our city.
Furthermore, we don't need a $3 million ``skywalk'' from the hotel to the new office tower. Anywhere it might be built would obstruct the best view (south side) of our famous hotel.
HOSKINS M. SCLATER ROANOKE
Vocation is more than a 9-to-5 job
I HAVEN'T the foggiest idea who Edward Hopper Mondrian was, as mentioned in Bob Shields' June 18 letter to the editor (``A college education for dog grooming?''). But it's obvious Shields doesn't understand the difference between a job and a vocation.
Derived from the Latin voco, vocare - ``to call'' - a vocation is a calling, not just a job, and few places can better help you find your calling and prepare you to fulfill it than college. He seems unaware of this finer meaning of the word, and insists that colleges do nothing to prepare students for ``vocations.'' On the contrary, skills that Shields says employers want these days are the same ones colleges try to engender in their students to help them succeed academically and in their vocations: good communication skills, clear and critical thought, and a working knowledge of computers that have replaced pencil and paper. Thus, colleges do train students for vocations, and for jobs as well.
Success in college requires maturity, responsibility and self-discipline, the same qualities one needs to get and keep a job. Colleges turning out graduates lacking these attributes need to look seriously at their standards for success.
The world we live in demands work, for survival, for growth, for the betterment of the individual and the world itself. This is the work that is everyone's task. This is the real meaning of vocation, not a 9-to-5 punch-clock job.
SHANNON YOUNG BROOKS PENHOOK
Folks can survive government bans
SHAME on the Environmental Protection Agency for not forthrightly admitting that ``only'' 3,000 deaths per year from lung cancer can be attributed to secondhand smoke.
Let's put this into perspective. How many deaths per year resulted in the ban on cotton sleepwear for children, forcing all American youngsters to sleep in suffocating nylon and polyester pajamas? Or better yet, wrapped in flame-retardant chemicals?
I must admit that I was somewhat of an outlaw with regard to the no-cotton-sleepwear law when it came to my heat-sensitive daughter. But she made it all the way through infancy and toddlerhood without bursting into flames. Probably because I didn't smoke while I held her in her cotton nightwear.
VICKI DUNAWAY WILLIS
Non-hippies also like Moody Blues
I TAKE exception to Mark Morrison's critique (July 1 Extra section, ``Symphony added a touch of class, but it was still Moody Blues rock'') of the Moody Blues' concert at the Roanoke Civic Center on June 29.
He quotes an ``old hippie'' who said: ``They're making a lot of old hippies happy tonight.'' I was flying Navy jets in Vietnam when the Moody Blues were nearing their zenith. I've always loved their music and I'm not, thank you, an old hippie, nor is the person with whom I attended the concert.
Flutist Ray Thomas is in his 50s now, which is probably the reason he ``looked more like the leader of a polka band than a rocker.'' And who is Morrison to be taking a whack at the way people in their 50s look?
Morrison says the more the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra was featured, the better the show was, and that it approached mediocrity when the Moody Blues performed alone. While the symphony certainly added some small backdrop, it was the Moody Blues that carried the evening. The symphony alone could hardly have demanded tickets at $35 each or drawn 4,484 fans on a hot summer night. The Moody Blues are major league; the symphony isn't quite double-A.
Give credit where due. The Moody Blues look and sound every bit as good in 1994 as they did in 1969.
DAVID D. SULLIVAN SALEM
Disney and Explore could join forces
I'M GLAD to see the opening of Explore Park after so many years of planning. It's something the Roanoke Valley needs.
I'm also glad valley leaders see a need for something to bring more visitors and tourists to the area. With all the hoopla that's surrounding the prospect of Disney America coming to Northern Virginia, why can't Disney and Explore join forces in our area and have the Lewis and Clark-type park envisioned long ago? If Manassas doesn't want to upset its historic battlefields, why not entice Disney to the threshold of Southwest Virginia?
BECKY MADY BLUE RIDGE
by CNB