
9 minute read
Letters
from Sept. 19, 2013
It’s the simple things
Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
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I want to write about one of life’s simplest pleasure. Man, I woke up this morning, and my bedroom was chilly. My girlfriend was all crêped up in her down blanket on the other side of my giant bed, and the floor fan was blowing on me, and the window fan was sucking in the relatively smoke-free air from my backyard where the sprinkler was cooling the earth and the air above it. I had slept so hard, I felt almost indescribably good.
What is it about sleep? I’m almost never tired. In fact, I’m never tired except in between semesters when I satisfy my love of excess red wine. Truly and maybe obviously, drinking depressants is pretty much the only thing that can slow my engine down. I’m no Leonardo Da Vinci—who reportedly used polyphasic sleep, which is a type of sleep pattern that involves sleeping not more than 5 hours a day in 20-minute intervals—or a Leonardo Di Caprio either, but there’s just something about an energetic life that feels as though it bestows immeasurable energy.
But still, that feeling of the nested warmth, and the coiling of an internal stretch that precedes throwing the sheet and blanket off and heading for the shower, I just don’t know that there’s a more simple pleasure. Well, a baby’s toothless grin comes pretty close, but then you have to clean up the poop.
On the other hand, there are times when my circadian clock is running like a broken digital, and I’ll lay awake all night watching Netflix after Netflix. I can almost always attribute that to the energized life as well. It’s like one of those nickle-cadmium batteries that are always a little too full so they can’t be fully charged. That’s caused by batteries never being fully discharged. To push the analogy, if you never get exhausted, by exercise or wakefulness or whatever, you develop this “memory effect.”
But I’ll bet you’re like me, and you’d rather dwell on a good sleep than lay in bed wondering why you can’t. —D. Brian Burghart brianb@newsreview.com
We’re whores!
Re “Nevada should accept nuclear waste” (The Liberty Belle, Aug. 29):
Regarding Chanelle Bessette’s opinion supporting Yucca Mountain, I’d like to ask if she’d like her house to be the neighborhood’s waste storage facility? Would she like Washoe County to store all of Las Vegas’ garbage? And so long as we’re America’s nuclear waste dump, why not profit from taking the world’s nuclear waste. The issue here is ownership. I don’t put my garbage in my neighbor’s garbage can. If California or New York creates all this nuclear waste for all their nuclear power needs, why can’t they store their own waste? The argument about putting all the eggs in one basket makes no sense. Nevada is ranked fourth for seismic activity, and there is no such thing as fail proof. The feds have already irradiated Nevada with hundreds of nuclear explosions. The reason we have an electoral system and two senators per state is to give small states like us better representation so we don’t become the nation’s dumping grounds both literally and figuratively. If your argument is that we can profit from storing nuclear waste, well, prostitutes also profit from storing guys’ sausages. So let’s spread our legs for the country’s junk and make some money.
Ed Park Reno
We’re losing!
Sen. Harry Reid claims that ‘anarchists’ have taken over Congress. “People who don’t believe in government—and that’s what the Tea Party is all about—are winning, and that’s a shame.”
According to The Hill, what gives Sen. Reid the vapors is that one of his colleagues, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) is holding up an energy bill until Harry Reid agrees to a vote on a Sen. Vitter amendment. Sen. Vitter wants to require congressional and executive branch staff to enroll in ObamaCare health exchanges. You know, like the rest of us.
To Sen. Reid, that’s anarchy. What Senator Reid doesn’t appreciate is that his party’s Progressive type of governance—enabling Obamacare, years without passing a budget, national debt soaring to unimaginable heights, obstructing tax reform, oppressive bureaucratic regulations, selective law enforcement, destroying employment opportunities, etc.—makes “anarchy” an attractive alternative.
The real issue, Sen. Reid, is the limits placed on federal power by the United States Constitution. And your reckless abandonment of those limits. Your oath of office said nothing about liberalism or the Barack Obama administration. Your oath was to support and defend the Constitution. You should review it once in a while.
Sen. Reid, it’s your choice to equate putting government back into the Constitutional box with anarchy. But your discomfort tells me that the Tea Party is on the right track. One can only hope that their takeover of Congress succeeds.
Robert R. Kessler Las Vegas Editor’s note: As numerous mythbusters like factcheck.org have reported, congressional staffers are not exempt from the Affordable Care Act. However, the Washington Post reports that congressional staffers are “ineligible for any tax credits or subsidies.”
We’re wrong!
Re “Lost & Found” (Feature story, Sept. 5): The series of photos you display with your article about “Lost & Found” is interesting, but the caption for the 4th Ward School photo is wrong. The 4th Ward School is an active and very interesting museum, and has been for a number of years. The St. Mary’s Art and Retreat center occupies a national historic landmark that used to be the old hospital building.
I hope this was an error made while creating the web page, and not copied out of the book itself. That could cause questions about the accuracy of other information published. Nancy Humphries Gardnerville
We’re haters!
Re “We’re No. 1 in horrible indicators” (Left Foot Forward, Sept. 5):
I suspect I may speak for more than a few Nevadans when I ask the obvious question: If you dislike our state so much and think it is so terrible, why don’t you move?
David E. Palmer Reno
We’re in agreement!
Re “A mockery and a sham” (Letters to the Editor, Sept. 5):
I’ll bite on this too and probably bite everyone else a little bit as well: The writer is a jackass for thinking homosexuals have made a mockery of marriage. Heterosexuals, celebrity and reality television have done more than enough for me not to let other marriages influence me and to consider my marriage as sacred as I make it between my wife and myself.
If he can’t see the truth in that, then he’s not only a jackass but a hermit and a fool (and probably a great premise for a reality show). As to government recognition of marriage, inequality to singles, and marriage for tax fraud? Yup ... the jackass is partially right. The United States government should have never gotten in the business of marriage, marital tax credits, marital benefits or marital recognition. Somewhere, sometime before I was born, the U.S. opted to get involved and as near as I can figure, they’ve been on the wrong side of civil rights and marriage, every time (until dragged kicking and screaming to a place where it can begin to recognize things like mixed religion marriages, interracial marriages and homosexual marriages). As far as I’m concerned, whatever ceremony you want to have as an expression of love for your partner, your neighbor or your local gas station attendant is no business of mine or the government, and I tend to think that would probably make it just a little more sacred for any of us who enter into it these days and even those who choose not to.
Felix Polanski
Reno
We’re for law abiding!
Re “Call off the dogs” (Editorial, Aug. 29):
Mr. President, please do call off the dogs of war ... they’ve been howling for far too long!
George W. in 2003 found himself between Iraq and a hard place. Our current President, O, finds himself in a Syria-ous international situation, and advocates a “limited strike” Translation: Bombing the heck out of someplace in Syria … but only for a little while! I am not saying that Syria should have used such weapons, if in fact they did, but using chemical weapons violates international law only when used against another nation. However, the United States would be violating international law should we bomb Syria.
Mr. President, we have issues here at home. The never-ending state of warfare is costing us our Bill of Rights! Our previous president, W., signed the PATRIOT Act, which basically says we can watch you, and President Obama signed the NDAA, which says we can take you. The Bill of Rights is in tatters. Far more people here die from lack of access to health care every year than from chemical or terror attacks. Is this not a moral issue? Our national and trade deficits continue to bleed us dry. Mr. President, I beg you to drop the world cop thing, and re-focus here at home. It makes no sense to kill more Syrians because we don’t like the way they kill each other.
What if some other country like Russia decided our lack of access to health care violated human rights and decided to bomb us? What if China decided we couldn’t pay back our debt to them, and did a no fly zone over San Francisco? What if India had decided they should do a “limited strike” on us because they were offended by Abu Ghraib? Just who do we think we are?
Attacking Syria is a violation of international law. Better to find a diplomatic solution. Please end the never-ending wars, restore our Bill of Rights, and balance the budget! Erik Holland Reno
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