Dear Editor,
I am writing in reply to Mr. Miller’s letter of last week in which he described my appreciation of nature and the beauty of our county as “Hippy Dippy.”
First, I have much respect for Mr. Miller and am in full accord with his views of the political folly of data centers.
When Jack Kennedy was campaigning for president in West Virginia, he was asked if he was a liberal and he replied, in essence, “If you mean am I concerned about health care and education and good jobs, then call me a liberal.”
We must stay focused on ideas and not on labels. I encourage everyone to go beyond Republican or Democrat when looking at issues of health care, immigration, economics and war. You know best what concerns your life and well-being better than what any political party tells you. Be like a juror when you vote next time.
Consider the facts and mark your verdict on facts alone.
As in a trial, listen to the lawyers but trust your own understanding first.
Martin Saffer
Hillsboro
Editor,
Lately, it seems that the size of The Pocahontas Times that I get has ballooned to about 10 pounds each week because of all the back and forth letters to the editor about AI data centers and the “need” for corporations to come here and “provide” growth and jobs. Hmmmm? I now read all these letters as a form of comic entertainment.
At one time Pocahontas County had about 30,000 residents. Now it is about 8-9,000 and we do not know how lucky we are. Who is going to qualify and fill all these jobs? We are “blessed” with clean air, clean water, zero traffic, low crime, neighbors who know each other. We have NO interstate highway bisecting the county. We have no railroad, we have no bus line. We have NO airport. The fastest way to go to Lewisburg is by canoe.
So, the “do-gooders” who seem to grow like dandelions each Spring only to fade and die in the Fall think that the county and its residents will, as the politicians say, “die and become dumb” if we do not keep up with “progress.”
There is no community anywhere who has not suffered the tragedy of growth. The need for more water, more power, more roads, more schools, more commerce, higher taxes, more law enforcement, etc and that creates nothing but tension, strained resources, traffic congestion, construction pollution and inflation.
And when a community becomes a village, becomes a town, becomes a city, becomes a metropolis the first to leave and look for a quiet peaceful place to live are the very preachers of growth who proselytized the nonsense in the first place.
Joni Mitchell put it into a song “The big Yellow Cab” where she sings, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
The old saying “Be careful of what you want because you just might get it,” should be tattooed onto the foreheads of all our do-gooders.
For the rest of us, we can continue to read the comical nonsense each week because we are fortunate in our isolation that the world of “growth” will always pass us by.
Joel Rosenthal
Hillsboro
