Regarding the Jan. 23 letter “A good strategy to reduce crime”:
I am appalled that someone would sit and write down a theory about something he learned in college. Subculture — well I guess the subcultures at the Country Club, the Crescent and other communities are immune to crime. To say that we who live in the West End community support crime is an insult at best. We will not talk about the white collar crime in other communities that for whatever reason is never discussed or printed in the newspaper. We do not condone crime in our community; we are just as peace loving as the next community. We bleed, we feel, we hurt like any other community, and to say that the help of the police chief and the city council will bring values back to our community is an indictment of the law-abiding citizens who live in the West End.
The West End community wants the police to police our community just like they do other communities. We have values, thank you very much! Please be careful when you accuse people of being valueless, it can get you into big trouble.
I would suggest that, Troy Beaver, you try living in the real world and see that the monster that Frankenstein created would one day turn on him. No community is immune or devoid of crime. I am ashamed that Salisbury has such narrow minded people living here. Perhaps with an open mind we could move the needle of bias closer to an end.
— Deedee Wright
Salisbury

On Jan. 10 the Salisbury Post printed my letter that was about training a student to use his/her mind instead of relying on calculators and computers and such.
Someone at the Salisbury Post put to it the heading “Computers Dumb Down A Society”. That is so far from the truth that it is laughable. However, I am not laughing. In my letter, I neither said nor implied any such thing. An inanimate object is incapable of doing anything on its own. It requires the input of a human. Neither computers nor any other object can dumb down a society. Only humans can do that. My comments were about training/using the mind instead of relying on such things as computers. As I said, there are benefits to using computers but only as secondary to using the mind.
The sentence in my letter where I used the words “dumbed down” was, “Having generations not taught to use their minds, gives us a dumbed-down society easily led.” That refers to the action of not teaching the students to use their minds. I did not even mention computers.
When setting a heading for any letter to the Editor, please be sure that it reflects the message of the author. The subject of a letter, column, book, etc. is usually, not always, at or near the beginning. My letter began with a quote attributed to Albert Einstein and then the next sentence put forth the subject of the rest of the letter.
My mistake was not writing the heading for my letter, as I have done this time, and leaving it for someone else to do.
— June Clancy
Salisbury

I just want to say thank you to the woman behind me in line at Walmart. I was purchasing groceries, and I had two small children with me. I had to tell one of the children that I couldn’t buy her candy several times due to the fact that I wasn’t sure if I could afford the food in the cart.
Just as the total was rung up, I knew I would have to return several items. The woman said she would pay the difference, nearly $12. I objected but she wouldn’t hear it. I asked for her phone number so I could repay her later, and she said she didn’t have a phone.
I am thankful for her generosity. I had another eight days until payday, and her help was a real blessing. I didn’t get her name.
They say what goes around comes around. I like to pay it forward, too.
— James Lambert
Salisbury