Letters to the Editor

Bring music back

On March 27 we traveled to Greenville to see the Greenville Symphony. Our first surprise was the setting of the Peace Center on the riverside with waterfalls and flowering Japanese cherry trees. The hall itself is a place of great function and beauty.

We were amazed to find the combined string sections to be more than double the size of Charleston's, even before this season's size reduction.

The concert was terrific, highlighted by a young Korean pianist, Yeol Eum Son, spectacularly playing Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30," renowned as the most difficult of all to play.

We searched the list of corporate sponsors and noted that it included BMW and Michelin North America, along with many local businesses, agencies and foundations. Obviously, things are going well.

Imagine then our shock in opening The Post and Courier to find our orchestra shut down. Having the symphony in Charleston may be the single most important bellwether of business health of the community.

Advocating for the arts is vital to the real estate industry, tourism, manufacturing, the recruitment of new industries and an outstanding work force. It is critically important that the Charleston metropolitan area rise to the challenge and support the orchestra's re-opening and permanent solid financing for the future.

Fred Sales

Lawton Harbor Drive

Charleston

Painful exit

This 79-year-old retired Episcopal priest has been brought to tears by the decision of the vestry and congregation at St. Andrew's Church, Mount Pleasant, to leave the Episcopal Church. This destruction of even one small facet of the church to which I have given my working life is painful.

I believe the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence, bishop of South Carolina, to be a good and godly man, and I believe that he is honest when he describes himself as "saddened" by the action.

But while I do not think of him as the cause of this action, I nonetheless believe he enabled it.

In a number of recent negative statements about our presiding bishop, about homosexuals in leadership roles in the church and about people with views on Holy Scripture at variance with his own, I believe he gave the leadership at St. Andrew's the notion that he would understand and support their decision.

One of the strongest points about the worldwide Anglican Communion has been the welcome extended to a profound diversity of opinions within its ranks. This, until recently, has been a "plus" rather than a divisive "minus."

I never felt that one must check his or her mind in the narthex when entering the church. In my youth the Episcopal Church was split by the old high church/low church factions. Some dioceses emphasized our Catholic roots in their worship and teaching. Most others, especially here in the South, epitomized our protestant heritage.

But we were all Episcopalians, and through the years that squabble disappeared because both sides either grew more loving, or made compromises.

My late friend, the Rt. Rev. John E. Hines, served as presiding bishop through the most contentious years of the civil rights movement. He was vilified by church people who wanted to preserve the segregated status quo. But we stayed together and emerged with far greater love and understanding.

What a sad day this is.

The Rev. Bert H. Hatch

Fort Street

Edisto Island

Abstinence only

I am a health teacher in a local public middle school and found the commentary published in The Post and Courier, "Abstinence-only sex education wastes taxpayers' dollars," very inaccurate. It stated that "no research study to date has been able to document positive behavioral changes among older teens as a result of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs."

Research published by the American Medical Association, the latest in a growing body of peer-reviewed studies, found that abstinence-only education effective at delaying the initiation of sexual activity in our youth.

This is "gold standard" scientific research and brings the total to 17 abstinence education programs that have been found effective at delaying sexual activity in youth.

The program in my school, Heritage Keepers, is a part of this peer-reviewed body of scientific knowledge.

I would love to see documentation of the intimidation of school boards as is claimed in the commentary. I personally sat in on eight weeks of abstinence-education instruction by Heritage Community Services and never heard them discourage the use of condoms or any type of birth control as the article states.

I have never witnessed negative attitudes toward abstinence education programs by students.

I believe the authors were writing about their own feelings, not the facts.

Bryan Alexander

Rondo Street

Charleston

Plight of jobless

We, the unemployed, are caring human beings, too. Watch us look with fear for a red tag saying the electric company is going to cut off our lights or pick up the phone to see if it still works. We count the hours until one minute past midnight on food stamp day, so we can go to an all-night store for food.

It is a daily fight for the unemployed to survive. Those who get small checks divide them -- a little bit for each necessity -- and then pray. Most had low paying jobs in the first place, so they have no savings. Cutting off their checks cannot put them to work in jobs that don't exist -- only keep them from starving.

There are more than 9.5 million of us who recently had jobs and are collecting unemployment checks. I don't show up in that count because I don't get unemployment.

There's little work on this island for people who are 71 and who've been out of the workforce for years.

I taught health in clinics and on an Indian Pueblo reservation. I was a social worker in a boy's prison and cared for my aging parents. My jobs were short-term ones with no retirement, so I live off Social Security, which barely pays the mortgage, and $20 a week food stamps.

I'm not lazy. I would rather be working. I do what I can to help my neighbors.

I know there must be people and senators who care about others. Senators, come visit us for a day.

Fran B. Reed

Beach Street

Holly Hill

Bike lanes

Twenty years ago, it didn't take much faith to ride a bicycle from the Piggly Wiggly at Maybank Highway and Folly Road out to Rockville and back. Though I am an experienced cyclist, it is much too frightening a prospect for me today.

The S.C. Department of Transportation can start to improve the safety of a bicycle trip on Maybank Highway now, by including striping for bicycle lanes as part of the current resurfacing project.

We cannot miss an opportunity for making a start to what will surely be more improvements down the road -- perhaps all the way to Rockville.

Sandra L. Fowler

Simonton Mews

Charleston

Local commander

Due to the rebellion in Kyrgyzstan, the U.S. Manas Air Base there has been very much in the news. What the media have not reported is that the commander of the strategically important air base in that country is Col. Blaine D. Holt, a Summerville resident. His daughter, Charlotte, is a senior at Pinewood Prep.

Col. Holt, a 1988 Distinguished Graduate of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) program at the University of Georgia, commands 1,100 airmen from the United States, France and Spain. They fly vital resupply and combat support missions in Afghanistan on a daily basis.

The new government in Kyrgyzstan is said to be opposed to the continued presence of Manas Air Base.

Its closing would be serious blow to the Afghanistan campaign. Google Col. Blaine D. Holt to view his official U.S. Air Force biography and learn more about the mission of his 376th Air Expeditionary Wing.

David L. Churchill

Shoal Creek Court

Summerville