Letters for March 8, 2018

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Re “Unsafe passage” (Letters, Feb. 1):

True enough, Ms. Cohen, but travel anywhere outside the “biggest little city” and your description of drivers here fits everywhere. I don’t know if the Reno Police Department is under-funded or not. Maybe they just have other fish to fry or just don’t care who kills themselves or others.

My solution? I stay off freeways, stay home or walk. Watch out, drivers and peds. Someone’s always got something to do besides drive.

Deborah Hart

Reno

Dats yat

Re “Flower power” (Art of the State, Jan. 25):

Regarding Jessica Santina’s largely complimentary review of Reno Little Theater’s Steel Magnolias, I did feel the need to make a point about her critique of the “Southern accents.”

Most of the women in the production are veterans of the Reno theater community, with at least two of them having acted professionally. I know, for a fact, that they worked with a dialect coach, a local academic.

In my work, I have met people from all over the United States and have traveled extensively, so I have encountered quite a few accents, or “dialects,” as one would say in theater. Most of my time in the southern states has been spent in New Orleans and Florida, where I lived for several years.

The accent in New Orleans alone widely varies within the city and neighboring parishes. In Florida, I only noticed “Southern accents” in the northern part of the state. My company is based in Dallas, and, within Texas, I have been able to discern the variety of accents across the state.

My point is that I am certain that the accents performed in this production are probably authentic for the area in which the play is set, Chinquapin, Lousiana, which is a fictitious town, probably based on playwright Robert Harling’s, hometown of Natchitoches (pronounced “NAK-a-desh”). Southern accents vary within cities, so unless Ms. Santina actually grew up in that part of Louisiana, I would respectfully disagree with her assessment of the actors’ accents.

However, I do thank her for the rest of her positive review. I heartily agree with it.

Bernadette Garcia

Reno

Force enforcement

As far as gun problems in general, I would observe that repeating identical actions, and expecting different results, applies directly to the current illegal use of firearms.

Now, society didn’t suffer greatly from “mental case” teens, killing other students in the past, yet guns of all descriptions, were easier to acquire in “those” days!

But the question needs asking that if the thousands of existing gun laws have not been successful, and they haven’t, just who is going to dream up one that does stop mental cases from killing others in a fit of rage?

Now, another fact that exists, is that with whatever—guns, drugs, immigration, etc.—existing laws are not being enforced!

Kathryn Stienle would be alive today had the bleeding hearts deported her killer one of the multiple times that he should have been deported!

The victims of the church shooting in Texas would be alive had the Air Force not dropped the ball, properly reporting the killer’s many felonious acts!

This present young killer was visited by law enforcement 60-some times! Are we to believe that none of those infractions would raise a flag high enough to legally allow law enforcement to put him into some kind of locked room?

Here is the advice I heard, not from a psychobabble do-gooder, but a farmer—“How about swift, and sure punishment, and simply enforce existing law?”

I would emphasize the “swift and sure punishment” aspect.

Ronal G. Ryder

Fallon