www.roanoke.com

Pursue peace through meditation

I felt much validated by the article "Meditation may alter brain's physical structure" (Dec. 18 Eureka page in Horizon).

As a practitioner and instructor of meditation, I have long known that regular meditation can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, reduce pain and add to overall physical and emotional health.

I loved reading that it may also impede memory loss related to aging.

I hope many of your readers will consider adding this simple health practice to their daily routine.

Make a New Year's resolution to take better care of yourself the easy way. Peace begins with you.

Susan Boyes

roanoke

The merits of rail

shrink under scrutiny

Frank Goodpasture's commentary (Dec. 15, "Price of fuel will determine economics of shipping by rail") is the best explanation of the difficulties in getting large trucks off the major highways that I've read.

It's worth noting the railroads' less-than-carload business declined from the mid-1950s onward, even before the interstate highway system had any impact on transportation in the United States.

Today's transcontinental unit trains run for UPS and J.B. Hunt are hard put to maintain schedule.

Finger-pointing at labor, management or the government misses the point. Rapid, dependable, on-time schedules are difficult to maintain on today's rail system.

When the extra time of waiting for the next train is added to the loading, transit time and unloading, you begin to see the difficulty in designing an effective rail system.

And that doesn't address the problem of the large number of independent owner/operators who would have to ride on the train with their trucks.

Goodpasture pointed out that over some period of time, the freight that isn't time-sensitive will shift to the railroads.

There isn't much of that, other than bulk loads such as grain and mineral traffic that moves mostly by rail already.

john snidow

hardy

Missing the mark

on alternative fuels

So, here's a no-brainer. What's moral? Fighting for oil? Or developing alternatives?

One Lynchburg man would say that it's good to fight for oil (Dec. 2 commentary by Michael A. Babcock, "A few good words about oil").

But to fight is to kill, and to take oil from other countries by force can only be theft.

Does he propose to give Exxon a pass on the sixth and eighth commandments? Apparently so.

The justification is that we're talking about economic necessity, something vital for our survival.

Alternative energy is a "distant utopia," he wrote. Fortunately, this is sadly misinformed and totally false.

There's no question that alternatives like biodiesel and ethanol are available immediately. They're effective, practical, clean, renewable, quickly scalable and much cheaper than gasoline, and are widely used in many other nations.

We don't have to fight for oil when we could more easily and cheaply make alternative fuels.

People of good will on both sides of the aisle are insisting that we regain our self-respect and our self-reliance.

Commercial interests must be subordinate to public interests. It's a question that needs to be debated from the grease pit to the pulpit.

Bill Kovarik

radford

Put vulgar diatribe

on Bush in hiding

Tim Abbott's Dec. 29 commentary "What kind of man is Bush?" is shallow, ignorant and frothing with rage.

This sort of vulgar diatribe is best hidden, not published.

J. Michael Bestler

Axton