Rules of election
Having perused the newly created "Rall’s Rules," it would appear under "Rall’s Rule of Ideological Counterbalance" [AfterThought, August 12] that your esteemed paper should provide equal space to publish contrasting opinions. If he cares to give it some thought, Mr. Rall might want to take economic conditions and the effect of third-party candidates into consideration. An analysis of recent elections suggest these factors have been decisive in the Ford-Carter (economics and Nixon pardon), Bush-Clinton (economics and Ross Perot), and Gore-Bush (Ralph Nader) races in resolving the public’s preference among these moderates.
William W. Stevenson
Charlottesville
Second-hand blues
Even though your stories of consignment shop woes have left the front burner ["Resale for sale," Fishbowl, June 3], I would like to add my two-cents worth as a very interested observer.
Charlottesville has never been very user-friendly to consignment shops of any stripe and just during the last few months three of them have bitten the dust, leaving only four of us still standing: Glad Rags for women, Silly Goose and Heaven to Seven for children, and Kids Kaboodle for children and moms. We all tend to feed off each other and none of us can be said to thrive madly! Add to this our nemesis, the Lollipop, a twice-yearly, one-week apparition with no permanent domicile, and no apparent overhead or rental obligation, and you can see that we are blue. If all of us were to perish, eventually I wonder whether our erstwhile consignors and customers would be happy with only two weeks each year of shopping for second hand roses.
Judy Brubaker
Owner
Kids Kaboodle
Correction
A couple of mistakes in Ace Atkins’ column last week ["What the helmet?" August 19] were clearly the product of his recent unfortunate head injury. To clarify, according to State code a motorcycle is any vehicle with three wheels or less, a horsepower greater than 2, and displacement greater than 50ccs. By that standard a Vespa ET2 is a motorcycle, whereas an ET2 Limited, with its 1.97 horsepower and 49.4 ccs, is not.