Bleak Future
Regarding the “No copper” article in the Feb. 2 LEO Weekly: I am an owner of a vacant house in the Portland neighborhood. I won’t get much out of it if I sell it, and it costs way too much to get it fixed to rent. I am stuck, but I take care of its outside appearance and may have someone move in to work off the rent. My Irish descendant grandfather believed that owning land is a responsibility one must take pride in. It has to be taken care of and protected. I have never seen so many boarded up homes in Portland. It’s looking more and more like Detroit. My mom in Detroit said when their auto industry started failing due to the rise in import auto sales, what was happening there would be the future of other cities. She was right.
No one paid much attention to Detroit other than avoiding the city. There aren’t many things made in the USA anymore. It is my understanding that even Louisville’s Frito Lay company moved to Mexico where you can’t drink the water, yet they are making chips there and sending them to Plano, Texas, to package them. This is what happens when our jobs are outsourced to other countries that don’t contribute to U.S. taxes. We are left with homes people can no longer afford, and banks take possession of them. Programs that uplift the disadvantaged are being cut. It will get worse as more companies leave.
Go visit Detroit now and see our future if things don’t get fixed. The devastation in Detroit spreads from the core of the city to Eight Mile Road and beyond. Mayors Harvey Sloane and David Armstrong supported rejuvenating the West End and Portland. Perhaps Jerry Abramson did, too, I don’t know. They got more police to patrol, got companies to locate there, fixed up city-owned properties and schools, beautified the streets with new sidewalks, and planted flowering trees — plus, people in need got assistance to fix up their homes. I hope Greg Fischer can succeed with his neighborhood plan.
Greta Imwiehe, Louisville
Extracting Bible DNA
Regarding Malcolm Tyler’s “Bible DNA” letter in the Feb. 2 LEO: It seems to me that a lot of anti-science sentiment and rhetoric is motivated by the false belief that faith is in some way threatened by science. The Bible is not intended to be a science textbook — it’s intended to present a particular view of God and his relationship to man. Attempts to defend the Bible scientifically usually result in either bad science (Intelligent Design, Young Earth theories, etc.) or strained interpretations of scripture.
Tyler has presented three examples of the latter. His edited and inaccurate segment of Psalms 139:15-16 is supposed to be an allusion to DNA, but part of the text left out says, “I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” So apparently our DNA is stored somewhere underground, or possibly in hell? As for the mention of dinosaurs in Genesis 1:21, I see “great whales, and every living creature that moveth … and every winged fowl after his kind.” Where are the dinosaurs? And Isaiah’s “fitting description of the shape of our planet” is a “circle.” The thing is, circles are flat, we live on a sphere.
Does any of this invalidate the Bible? No. However, science and theology are two different things, and it’s pure folly to try to validate one with the other.
Paul Riley, South End
Our Fault
We should expect of our presidents competence and willingness to take responsibility for their actions. These two quotes by Ronald Reagan, the first as a candidate in 1980 and the other as president in 1982, demonstrate his ability at these criteria:
“President Carter is acting as though … he hasn’t been in charge for the last four years — as though someone else were responsible for the largest deficit ($60 billion) in American history.”
“The ($200 billion) deficit? I don’t think blame for that can be laid at any one individual’s door.”
George Morrison, Original Highlands