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Letters

  • Largen gets it right on hospital, remembrances

    Gerald Largen’s Thanksgiving column was excellent.  He gave thanks for friends and mentioned Hal Jones who had recently passed away. 
    My wife, Jean, and I also remember Hal, whom we knew though his sister, Selma Myers.
    Gerald also put forth a cogent explanation of concern about the possibility of the soon to be vacated Harriman hospital being taken over by the Veterans Administration. 
    It was much better stated than my sort of similar thoughts.
    Jim Leitnaker
    Kingston

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  • No one is forcing Dunn Center to do anything

    I would like to provide some additional information to supplement the front page article written by Damon Lawrence that appeared in the Nov. 12 edition Roane County News under the headline “School board stymies transfer of Dunn land.”

    To quote a phrase used by County Executive Ron Woody, if Michael Dunn Center were to relocate to another part of the county this could be a “win-win” for both Michael Dunn Center and the county.  

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  • Generals being persecuted under antiquated rules

    How many suicide bombers would al Qaida or the Taliban have sacrificed in order to eliminate these two generals, David Petraeus and John Allen?
    Yet, we are doing it for them because of a private tryst and a flood of emails that conflict with an antiquated Uniform Code of Military Justice article that requires marital fidelity of our military officers who live from day to day and year to year in combat zones far from their spouses.

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  • Generals being persecuted under antiquated rules

      How many suicide bombers would al Qaida or the Taliban have sacrificed in order to eliminate these two generals, David Petraeus and John Allen?

    Yet, we are doing it for them because of a private tryst and a flood of emails that conflict with an antiquated Uniform Code of Military Justice article that requires marital fidelity of our military officers who live from day to day and year to year in combat zones far from their spouses.

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  • It’s what’s under the river that really worries him

    The U.S. government keeps a lot of secrets it doesn’t want you to know about.

    Inadvertently, I read some declassified material I obtained from a fellow who worked in a nuclear byproduct dump.

    It had some horrifying details about the nuclear pollution in Watts Bar Lake  and the Tennessee River.

    It seems as though there were releases of strontium 90, cesium and, I think, tritium. Some have 6,000-year half lives.The main concentration is right out in the bend at Kingston City Park.

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  • Post-election stench drifting by, writer says

    The Republican Party took careful aim at their target while the Tea Party acted as spotters with Mitch McConnell and Rush Limbaugh acting as forward observers.

    They took the “fire” signal from Karl Rove, relayed it to Romney who promptly shot himself in the foot, and there is no wonder!

    The way he was dancing around from position to position was like a bee in a flower pot!

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  • Roane County lags on free books for children program

    Recently, Tennessee’s First Lady, Crissy Haslam honored McMinn County Imagination Library as the top ranking program in the state with regards to the percentage of children enrolled in this early childhood literacy program.  

    Fully 89 percent of McMinn County’s children, from birth to age 5, are receiving free books every month.  

    McMinn Imagination Library volunteers have done a great job reaching their children.
    Roane County’s enrollment is 64 percent.  

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  • Time for a change in Harriman High football coaching

    I have watched Harriman High School football since 1958. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost, but we always competed.

    This is the worst coached team I have seen in my 64 years.

    When I played for Harriman, practice was harder than any game we ever played.

    I have watched these teams practice for a long time. These coaches don’t allow tackling.
    This is football, coach.

    I am so sick of hearing “We are so young.” You haven’t been young for the past nine years.

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  • Likens bombing of embassies to World War III

    A recent letter by B.J. Gillum urges us to stay out of war. But it appears to me that we are already in World War III.

    Bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanganyika were acts of war, as was the bombing of the USS Cole.

    The first bombing of the World Trade Center was still another and, of course, a “better” job was done on that building on Sept. 11, 2001.

    This war is quite different than the two I was involved in, World War II and Korea, and will have to be approached differently, of course.

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  • High wind topples crane, but leaves are another matter

    I watched a nine-story-high steel construction crane above a skyscraper in New York as the wind lifted it to vertical and then forced it to topple over and hinge downward until its tip crashed against the structure 80 stories above a Manhattan street.

    The TV reporter said that Hurricane Sandy’s wind speed was over 100 mph at that height.
    Today I used a leaf blower with a wind force rating of 130 mph to blow leaves from my decks and patio.

    I noticed that the 130-mph wind often couldn’t move a leaf from a crack or a corner.

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