Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 2, 1995 TAG: 9501070059
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Of the 22 million passengers that Amtrak carries annually, a decline of 300,000 passengers in 1994 represents a loss of 1.3 percent, not statistically significant unless such a decline continued or accelerated over several years. Sure, cut-rate air fares are a factor; in fact, they are a factor in the fact that almost every domestic airline is losing money.
Are airlines ``going the way of the stagecoach,'' too? If so, what with Greyhound hovering on the brink of bankruptcy, the only way we will be able to get there one day is to be born there!
The private automobile is the great bete noire of the 20th century, particularly since the end of World War II. Originally a way to travel locally or from isolated rural farmsteads to the nearest town, it gradually became the predominant mode of intercity travel. The Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and 1960s, suburbanization, and the social and demographic decline of cities have contributed to the decline of all public-transportation services with the exception of air travel. Still, for those of us who want to go from, say, Roanoke to Norfolk or Lynchburg to Washington (eight out of 10 intercity trips are between cities 100 miles or less apart), there is no truly satisfactory alternative to the train. Unless, that is, one wants to fight weather and traffic, risk an accident or a ticket, worry about a place to park, or wants one's car possibly vandalized 100 miles from home.
Ours is the only First World nation that does not have a subsidized, government-operated passenger-rail system. All such systems lose money, but so do the U.S. Army, the Food and Drug Administration, the FBI and the National Park Service.
Amtrak does a yeoman job with what money Congress gives it. Per dollar spent, 22 million Americans receive far more benefit from the trains that serve more than 400 cities daily or tri-weekly than they do from sending troops to Haiti or sending a general and his cat from Naples to Colorado Springs in cosseted luxury on a Globemaster. Who are we kidding, folks? ``The way of the stagecoach,'' indeed!
RANDOLPH GREGG
ROANOKE
Voters shook their heads no
GEORGE LANDRITH, a Republican who lost his 1994 congressional bid in the 5th District by a large margin, says (Dec. 26 news story, ``He'll be back'') that he is fortunate the race was not closer or ``I would've spent the next couple of months wondering which two hands I should've shook.''
Of course, as any high-school student knows, the past participle of shake is shaken. Otherwise, James Bond would have had his martinis ``shook and not stirred.''
More worrisome than Mr. Landrith's grammatical error, however, is his belief that winning the election is a question of shaking the right hands. Perhaps he should consider the possibility that the voters of the 5th District are smart enough to see through a campaign based entirely on Clinton-bashing.
WILLIAM GREENBERG
BLACKSBURG
Generating wrath instead of pity
I'VE BEEN reading each daily installment of the Good Neighbors Fund stories and the recent series (``The Welfare Web'') on welfare recipients. While most of the stories are sad, even touching, I have a real problem with two particular stories.
The first one is the story of the woman who needed assistance with her electricity bill because she ran her air conditioner excessively for her dog!
The second one is about a woman from Iran. She couldn't come up with one dollar to put under her child's pillow for the tooth the child lost, but the woman could get enough money to buy cigarettes.
I think the newspaper made serious errors in judgment by printing those two stories. I know now that my charity dollars will go to other places. I refuse to help a woman cool her dog or a mother smoke her child's tooth-fairy money. What was the newspaper thinking? That's no way to solicit donations - only resentment.
DEBRA ADKINS
ROANOKE
Seeing Santa in our own image
CLAIRE SANDERS' egocentric letter regarding Christmas is the height of hypocrisy. The Christmas spirit of good cheer and peace on Earth doesn't leave much room for racism such as Sanders' description of the ``general, literate (mostly white) public.''
The description of Santa in the famous letter to Virginia is of one who ``exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.'' Permission isn't needed for a nonwhite Santa - Santas of color already exist! At least they do if there really is a ``spirit of Christmas.''
Not to compare Santa with Jesus - a comparison that finds Santa sorely lacking - but this same confusion exists in the myth of the blonde, blue-eyed Jesus. Different cultures have depicted Jesus in different ways. The reality is that a fair-skinned Jesus would not have lived long in the desert. Yet, like other cultures, we have come to see Jesus as ``being like we are.'' Except that ``we'' are a multicolored, multicultural group.
To paraphrase the apostle Paul, Christ lives in us whatever our color. And though Santa is but a poor imitation for the ``reason for the season,'' for the Christmas or Christian spirit to have any meaning, we have to get beyond our narrow personal view to the larger universal one.
STEVEN H. SHUSSETT
BUCHANAN
by CNB