Letter: City’s Wise Investments
Letter to the Editor
The City of Alexandria just received a bond rating upgrade — to AAA stable. You cannot get any better than this!
Alexandria: ‘Listening’ to Vesey Folk Opera
At Black History Museum
"It was a much-needed break from technopoly," said one theatregoer at a recent Wednesday evening at The Black History Museum in Alexandria. Technopoly is a term often used today to describe how technology monopolizes our daily lives.
Letter: Reminders of Oppression
Letter to the Editor
The recent controversy over Confederate memories has really made me to start thinking about our memories that are preserved. Then I realized that here in the USA, especially the East we have so many reminders of an old regime of which we are no longer apart.
Letter: Rules for The Road
Letter to the Editor
When will Alexandria take a cue from Arlington County with the portable "State Law" pedestrian crosswalk signs. From eastbound Braddock Road at the crosswalk/train tracks, to Mt. Vernon Avenue in Del Ray/Arlandria and elsewhere, they are constantly moved into lanes of traffic presumably by pedestrians and I'm guessing transit bus drivers.
Letter: Ignoble Cause
Letter to the Editor
The flying and subsequent removal of the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds in Columbia, S.C., has focused attention on symbols of the Confederacy elsewhere.
Editorial: What’s Special about Alexandria?
Share tips in upcoming Newcomers and Community Guide.
The Gazette Packet’s annual Newcomers and Community Guide will publish Aug. 26. A bevy of interns, plus staff writers and editors, are preparing this year’s editions, but we need help from our readers.
Editorial: What’s Special about Your Community?
Share tips in upcoming Newcomers and Community Guides.
The Connection’s annual Newcomers and Community Guides will publish Aug. 26. A bevy of interns, plus staff writers and editors, are preparing this year’s editions, but we need help from our readers.
Column: 'Scant' Know For Sure Anymore
After six years, four months and two weeks since being diagnosed with stage IV, non-small cell lung cancer (the “terminal” kind), I can say with certainty that I have no sense of what my next CT scan, scheduled for July 15th, will indicate. Previously (multiple scans over multiple years), I’ve felt something in my upper chest/lungs where the largest tumors are located and the subsequent scan showed nothing of consequence.
Letter: Anger and Disappointment
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor: I would like to share with you a very disturbing scene that I witnessed over the weekend. I have not been able to shake the anger and disappointment that I have felt ever since, and so I am reaching out to you to help shed light on this issue.
Letter: Historic Lessons
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor: Regarding “Learn from History” [letter, July 9], the writer makes a case that, quite frankly, appalls me. Maybe he should take a little more time to seriously look at history in regards to the Civil War. He states that a “small fringe” of flag adherents use it as a racist hate symbol while the “vast majority” regard it as a symbol of other things. Not sure where his support for this statement comes from. A significant problem I have with this interpretation is that he is suggesting that all of the factors he names, “family/ancestral heritage, rebellion against central authority, local anatomy, hierarchical rather than (Marsian) egalitarianism, social order, resistance to abuse of power, etc.” should deserve equal status.
Letter: One Nation ... Indivisible
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor: I was surprised at a letter last week [“Learn from History”], but then I realized that writer must be a young man. Those of us who lived through the ‘50s and ‘60s lived through the history of the Confederate flag being used as a symbol of defiance to the Supreme Court decisions on equal rights and desegregation as well as the Federal Government’s use of force to enforce these decisions. The Confederate flag did not fly over the South Carolina capitol building until that time, and I remember clearly the searing images of policemen in the south wearing the flag on their helmets, white supremacists using the flag as a clear symbol of opposition to what was happening, and simmering racism boiling over into the streets in many locations.
Letter: Disappointing Coverage
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor: I was disappointed that your July 2 cartoon pictured Miss Dixie, gazing at the Confederate flag, disrespectfully with her hoop skirt billowing up to show her undergarments. This was an unnecessary attack on a lady; she could have been portrayed in a more dignified posture. Or was this an attempt to put humor into the drawing? Of the adolescent variety if that. How does this drawing prove modern cultural superiority to that of the 19th century South?
Letter: Quantrell Avenue?
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor: As the city considers what to do about street names and monuments honoring the Confederacy, let me suggest that a good place to start is with Quantrell Avenue in the city’s West End. In 2011, the Office of Historic Alexandria pretty much confirmed what I had long suspected.
Letter: Preserve History
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor: The Military Order of the Stars and Bars at its convention held on July 10, 2015 in Alexandria passed the following resolution: Resolved that: History should not be abolished or wielded in the pursuit of vengeance. It is a tool that is to be used to build a better future. The Confederate heritage community acknowledges that the battle flag has been inappropriately used and abused by certain hate groups. We will not surrender to hate, or abandon our heritage.
Letter: Reflect on This Monument
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor: While we realize that there has been no official call to remove or move the memorial to Alexandria’s fallen Civil War soldiers, we write to express our point of view, which is of deep appreciation for this historic monument and the story it tells.