Sidewalk Shovel Issue Goes Beyond Falls Church City
Editor,
Hear! Hear!
Thanks to the previous writers to the editor to remind the Falls Church residents to shovel their walkways as a legal requirement and civic responsibility. I would like to add that the readership of the News-Press goes beyond Falls Church.
Those of us who live in Fairfax County have the same problems when people don’t shovel their walkways. There are some owners or renters who are not in physical shape to do the labor intensive work. Some are elderly and disabled. Let us hope good neighbors are on the alert and will be able to band together in show of community spirit to help them out. Just like neighborhood picnics or yard sales, let’s all get out to do something. Offer to shovel or a cup of hot cocoa. Clean the walkways to schools, to bus stops, to mailboxes. Don’t just sit back and blame lack of city resources or slow response. We ourselves are the best resources. I was fortunate to have a neighbor help shovel my driveway when he noticed my slow struggling progress. We didn’t know each other; we do now. What a great way to make friends. Help clean cars off too, especially the rooftops.
On behalf of those who have been helped, thank you all for keeping us safe. The car drivers will thank us for staying on the sidewalks, out of their way.
Helen Li
Via the Internet
Prayer Breakfast More Inclusive Than Reported
Editor,
In a world with much conflict, one might have thought that any peaceful, friendly gathering of 3,500 people from 180 countries was highly commendable.
That this view is shared by Senator Chuck Grassley and Congressman Kevin Brady is suggested by their enthusiastic tweets from the National Prayer Breakfast, which they — evidently unlike Nicholas Benton — actually attended.
Moslems and Jews need not apply? This is an invitational event. Many foreign dignitaries from decidedly non-Christian backgrounds are treated courteously enough that they attend repeatedly.
No Jews? Was the News-Press ever aware that Senator Javits, dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, read Psalm 23 between labored breaths in 1984?
It is both ironic and dismaying to see the News-Press start to head, leftward, down a mirror path of inaccuracy and shrill denunciation that characterizes some right-wing voices for which it has no use.
David Peyton
Falls Church
Yes, Robert, It Is ‘Year Of the Cat’
Editor,
Correction to the caption to your front page picture appearing on this week’s FCNP. This new year is the year of the Rabbit, not Cat. By the way, there is no such ting as year of the Cat in the Chinese Zodiac. Closest thing is year of the Tiger, which this new year is not.
Robert Lee
Falls Church
(Editor’s reply- Last week’s front page photo was taken at the Eden Center, a Vietnamese community that celebrated Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year. Tết is often confused with the Chinese New Year. While you are correct that this is the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese New Year, we are in the Year of the Cat in respect to Tết.)
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