Drawing conclusions

I really enjoyed your article “Sketchy characters” in the C-VILLE Weekly [January 7]. I am a fan of “Slowpoke,” “Tom Tomorrow,” “The City” by Derf, “Tom the Dancing Bug” and Ted Rall. They make me laugh and I like that; I am going to look for Ted Rall’s book of cartoons, Search and Destroy. Please give my regards to them, and the best to them, you and the personnel of my favorite weekly newspaper, always.

Dina O’Brien
Charlottesville

Poor excuses

Just curious, here. Am I the only one of your readers to whom it has occurred that your sainted “poor residents” also use most of the services that the State provides with the tax money it extracts from our citizens? Must Virginia’s tax system be a 100 percent, absolute and shameless mechanism by which one class of citizens plunders the wealth and income of another? What ever happened to everybody paying their “fair share”? By the way, I’m sure you realize that hikes in the corporate income tax get passed along to the customers of those corporations and that eventually these costs get handed down to you and me, no?

I also found that your bar chart of “hourly wage at 40 hours per week needed to afford fair market rents” [Extra, January 14] does not reflect reality. People tend to “double up” and “triple up” in their housing (for example, as in the manner that Hispanics are often stereotyped for), and also to work longer than a mere 40 hours per week, which is quite slack by modern standards. In order to increase the supply of “affordable” housing, is it not correct that we must increase the supply of housing? Ah, but this would run against the anti-growth environmentalist type. If we can’t build more housing, that naturally drives up the price of the existing limited stock of housing, correct?

Terence Price
Springfield

Germs be gone

With regards to your recently contributed rant about hand sanitizer [The Rant, January 14], I too miss good old H2O, but I’m very glad to use the hand sanitizer at our elementary school. First, school officials estimate that until water costs revert to previous levels, conservation could save up to $80,000 system-wide. Also, I’m one of those who think the next water emergency could be sooner than we think. As for the germ-killing part, the alcohol-based gels that evaporate on the hands are different from the triclosan-based products (which contribute to the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria). I’m a first-year school librarian, encountering the germs of 350 students a week; since I started using hand sanitizer (which kills viruses as well as bacteria), I haven’t caught anything.

Melissa Techman
Albemarle County

Clean machine

This is in response to Alex Citron’s recent letter in C-VILLE [Mailbag, May 20]. I believe that I, Ms. Logan, explained myself perfectly in my letter, which was printed earlier, and have no need to come clean. I do, however, want to respond to Mr. Citron in regards to his questioning my integrity.

My earlier letter to C-VILLE was simply to call into question the accuracy of the reporters’ statements, which I knew to be false. In regards to the Dixie Chicks, I gave Mr. Citron the most accurate response that I could which was “We have not banned the Dixie Chicks.” This was the answer that I was given by our program director, and by our parent company, Clear Channel. My integrity should never be called into question when I am giving the most truthful answers that I can. And just because I call into question the accuracy of this paper, when I know the statements to be false, does not make me have any less integrity than someone who calls into question the decision-making of our President.

Angie Logan
Charlottesville


Don’t look back

Thanks for the straight-shooting review of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice [“Get Out Now,” Reviews, May 13] as presented by the Sideshow Opera Company. Sadly, the company seemed aptly named. The director of this potentially evocative work substituted the banal for the mysterious and traded on tiresome One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest clichés about heartless mental health workers and insane patients with hearts of gold. Far from uncovering “truths hidden in the myth,” this directorial meddling trivialized it and made nonsense of its most dramatic and moving scene, where Orpheus struggles to obey the command not to look back at his beloved.

The evening’s lovely singing and playing will remain with me. So too, I’m afraid, will the accompanying soap opera.

Ken Wilson
Charlottesville