ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100104
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
THE GOVERNMENT shutdown caused grief, worry and inconvenience to some federal employees, as well as to workers outside of government employment.
What really is amazing is the low savings rate of many American workers. It appears that some employed people have no savings whatever - no money in savings and checking accounts, no savings bonds, and no money even in the kids' piggy bank. The time to save is when you're working for a salary, regardless of the amount earned. Most senior citizens learned this after the terrible Depression years ago. Most still save during their retirement years.
If a balanced budget isn't passed this year, you will then see how bad things will get. Now is the time to put a few bucks away each payday. Living from paycheck to paycheck is a bad policy. Saving money is an art. Likened to an art, it requires discipline, determination and effort. Try it. It works! No excuses.
NICK BORSELLA
ROANOKE
Bands are vital to football's tradition
REGARDING your Dec. 31 article, ``If music be the food of victory ... '':
Despite having spent many arduous days preparing a halftime show worthy of national television, and despite hours of travel to New Orleans and more rehearsal hours on a motel's cold, asphalt parking lot, the fine Virginia Tech band wasn't allocated any televised time by the network brass.
Instead, the watching millions were, as usual, subjected to the excoriating, boring announcer who rehashed the game's first-half performance just seen!
This situation is no less true for other outstanding bands prepared to entertain at bowl games, and which are disappointedly displaced at halftime.
Marching bands, in my experienced opinion, are an important and integral part of the football tradition, and are, to many, more interesting than the games. I also feel that it's a sad note (pun intended) to see the wholesomeness of the nation's best bands sometimes replaced at major bowl games by Las Vegas- or MTV-influenced shows that often exhibit crude gestures by those appearing to be suffering from severe spastic disorders.
JIM JOHNSON
Former assistant band director
University of Arizona
Super-Fiesta/Shrine Bowl
composer, arranger
ROANOKE
Heed the message of blacks in trouble
QUINCY Quick, a former Ferrum College basketball player, is a suspect in a drug-related drive-by shooting (Dec. 31 article, ``Athlete charged with murder'').
In my heart, I feel compassion. It's difficult to comprehend that such a nice person with so much potential for good will may spend much of his life confined behind bars, if he's convicted.
The lifestyle of drugs and violence is so powerful to young, strong, black men - the sons of the world. Somehow, we share the blame. It's easy to pass his deed off as a bad decision, made by an individual. But there are so many individuals making that decision.
It seems these young, black men are telling us something through their behavior, and we as a society aren't listening. It has nothing to do with us, we think. Or does it?
MARTHA SCOTT
FERRUM
Clinton has shown his compassion
I READ yet another letter to the editor about why we're in Bosnia. John E. Arnesen (Dec. 29 letter, ``Clinton contradicts himself on Bosnia'') comments that President Clinton has shown no reasons of national security. He seems cold and heartless to the plight of Bosnia's poor people. He isn't by himself. Many people seem to not care about the little children of this awful tragedy.
There were the same feelings years ago when the Jews were burned in concentration camps by the Germans. Where are all the feelings of disgust and revulsion at what these people are doing to other people?
Human beings, if they truly love God and their brothers and sisters, should be grateful to Clinton for finally taking the initiative to end this awful tragedy. Jesus would hang his head at our indifference to others.
BOB GREGORY
ROANOKE
Let's wait for gun law's results
THERE YOU go again (Dec. 26 editorial, ``Guns and butter and youth crime'') trying to make firearms the scapegoat of all the eroded and discarded values of society.
The recently passed self-protection law is a good law, and one long needed. It isn't a loose gun law, nor does it make it a cinch for virtually anyone over 21 years old to get a concealed weapon's permit. I doubt if you have ever applied for a permit or even perused the contents of the law. You should at least do the latter.
Before you write more unproved assertions about a subject you appear to have little knowledge of or experience with, why not be both liberal ``fair'' and conservative ``real.'' Give the current self-protection law 18 months. Then get an unbiased statistical survey, and report on the number of crimes for which a permit holder has been convicted and the number of crimes thwarted by a permit holder. My money says there will be extremely few of the former and a goodly number of the latter.
RICHARD K. CULBERTSON
BLACKSBURG
LENGTH: Long : 103 linesby CNB