Life lines
I would like to point out some things about your article covering the Albemarle County Board of Zoning Appeals hearing on the Planned Parenthood building [“Clinic wins on appeal,” The Week, November 16]:
1) David Nova’s comment, “Now we’re hearing about a mandate to overturn Roe v. Wade…” was a typical overstatement from Planned Parenthood. The BZA has NO authority to overturn Roe v. Wade. At issue was whether an abortion hospital belongs in a residential area. Only the deliberately misinformed believed that “choice” was at stake.
2) You missed the irony regarding hospital standards at Planned Parenthood. First, you can’t accurately pin this on pro-lifers, since both pro-choice and pro-life residents oppose the hospital’s location. Secondly, if you love irony, ask yourself why Planned Parenthood isn’t the one lobbying the Virginia Legislature to require hospital standards for abortion clinics? Planned Parenthood claims to “fight for women’s lives,” but it took them 30 years to build an abortion clinic to hospital-like architecture in Virginia. Elevators that accommodate gurneys may seem unreasonable, unless you were one of the seven women who required emergency services at one abortion clinic in Northern Virginia in 2003. Plus, all other outpatient surgical clinics are accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO), a national health care accrediting organization. Why does Planned Parenthood want to operate outside of the watchful eye of a board of health? Better still, Planned Parenthood is likely to convince their supporters to “fight for women’s lives” and lobby against higher clinic standards at the upcoming General Assembly. How is that for irony?
3) Planned Parenthood claims to speak for families, but they didn’t build their clinic in Ivy, or a commercial area. They built next to middle-class town homes. Despite a typical $36.6 million surplus in 2003, they acquired cheaper land. The hearing was about whether Albemarle homeowners can expect the BZA to respect the property rights of local residents, since Planned Parenthood obviously will not.
4) Planned Parenthood claimed they had 890 supporters present, but Nova neglected to mention that many of their activists came from several cities including Richmond, Washington D.C., and New York City. It is not wrong to recruit people, but if Planned Parenthood really thinks they are a majority, why are they trucking in activists from out of state? The Albemarle BZA doesn’t need a bigger auditorium, they need to check IDs and limit hearing observers to Albemarle residents only.
Marnie Deaton
Director, Central Virginia Family Foundation
You’d better shop around
I read with interest the article “Living the Poverty Diet” by Mitch Van Yahres [The Week, November 23]. I was very surprised that he was paying 90 cents for an apple, and that he said “most fresh fruits and vegetables were too expensive for my budget.”
As an exercise, I took the $2.55 per day figure, as $17.90 per week, and did a little shopping in our store, C’Ville Market. I thought it a useful exercise, since we will shortly begin taking food assistance tender at our registers.
My! I was able to buy 3 pounds of apples, a large bunch of celery, 10 pounds of potatoes, 3 pounds of onions, a big head of romaine lettuce, 2 pounds of kale, 2 pounds of carrots, 4 pounds of oranges, a pound of dried beans and a head of garlic. And I still had about $5 left in my weekly budget!
The honorable delegate clearly needs some help in shopping and cooking. It isn’t the produce that’s high, it’s the Chocolate Covered Pizza Bombs that cost so much. I invite him to come and see us.
Claire Colette Coppin
Marketing Manager, C’Ville Market
Development hell
In my 30 years Downtown, the City of Charlottesville has done both good and bad [Read This First, November 23]. The apparently uncontrolled renovation of Downtown is a big bad. We all waited with frayed nerves for the completion of The Paramount Theater and of Court Square. Now we see that there is even less on-street parking and more street blockages. In answer to complaints concerning poor planning we are told, as we were a year ago, to be patient—all will be wonderful in two years. But, will any of the local stores be here in two years? In the meantime, will our rents or real estate taxes decrease?
The last three weeks at Daedalus have been the slowest in 20 years. The holidays are here. Will some of us, because of poor city planning, not be here in the New Year?
Sandy McAdams
Owner, Daedalus Books
Reminiscing on Rall
I must say, I miss Ted Rall’s columns that C-VILLE used to run in the AfterThought section of the paper. Molly Ivins versus Rich Lowry is scarcely a replacement for his thought-provoking essays. Rall displays a rare willingness to explore and challenge the curious concepts popularized by the Bush Administration (such as prosecution of the “war on terror” to “bring peace and democracy to Iraq”). In this way Rall demonstrates the kind of courage that has long since been eradicated from the mainstream media; he has spent time on the ground seeing for himself conditions in Afghanistan, he has written a book on the subject (Gas War—The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan), and he has a built a reputation as a fine war reporter.
Whether or not one actually agrees with all of Rall’s opinions, his ideas are based on solid facts. His perspective is refreshing and humanitarian because he writes from the point of view of ordinary people (as opposed to corporations, corporate profit or superpower “geopolitical interests”). As we now appear to be moving into an era of the “New Dark Ages” in the United States in which facts seem to be irrelevant and inconvenient, original human thought is systematically suppressed and human rights are passé, I believe that Rall’s brand of provocative writing is particularly important for the promotion of a “collective national mental health.”
So I would like to suggest that regular publication of Rall’s columns be resumed in the C-VILLE. If the mainstream media can get away with astonishing selectivity in its news coverage (e.g. incessant reporting of voter fraud in the Ukraine while completely ignoring the discovery of similar electoral shenanigans in Ohio and Florida), then we should surely be entitled to explicit accounts criticizing the “official” views. Or has this country already been transformed into something more resembling the former Soviet Union?
Rob Pates
Charlottesville
CORRECTIONS
The photo of Tom Peloso that ran with On the Record, November 23, was incorrectly attributed. The photographer is Aaron Farrington.
In last week’s cover story we incorrectly reported that Wild Wing Café offers karaoke. Instead, Buffalo Wild Wings has karaoke Thursdays at 9pm.
In last week’s Acquired Tastes column, we misspelled the name of Tammy Knock from Jefferson Vineyards.
In last week’s Plan It Now, we listed the wrong date for Tony Bennett’s performance at The Paramount Theater. The correct date is Wednesday, December 15.