Re: Another idea for honoring Reagan; Chatham is left behind 

Another idea for Reagan

While in no way do I defend the record of our 40th president as detailed in your satire of "Ronald Reagan Day" ("Calling fans of the Gipper," by Lisa Sorg, Feb. 18), nonetheless I thought it appropriate to amend your list and add to your proposal:

Whereas President Ronald Reagan, having a personal abhorrence of nuclear weapons and the political ambition to abolish all nuclear weapons, believing the philosophy of mutually assured destruction to be truly mad and morally wrong, and thus possessing the courage to dream of a future for the world freed from the threat of nuclear war, dared propose to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that both nations eliminate their entire arsenals of ballistic missiles and offered to share the Strategic Defense Initiative with the Soviet Union at the Reykjavik Summit in 1986;

Let it therefore be resolved that, for negotiating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first treaty of the Cold War era to achieve the abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons, the blue sky over North Carolina shall forever be known as The Ronald Reagan Nuclear-Free Zone.

(Disclosure: I have no connection whatsoever to The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project.)

Darrin W. Snyder Belousek
Raleigh

Chatham is left behind

I am seething. I just read the article about the lack of broadband in Chatham County ("Life in the slow lane," cover story, by Fiona Morgan, Feb. 18). Despite pleading with Embarq, my neighborhood is still stuck with dial-up. There is no relief in sight. Every call to Embarq receives a different response, from "It's coming soon" to "It will never come."

We moved to wonderful Chatham County in 2006, building in a rural subdivision. Most of us have 10 acres, but we are a subdivision of 26 lots. We are next to a subdivision with smaller lots—and more of them—on a road that is well-populated. However, according to Embarq, it is not cost-effective to allow our neighborhood to join the 20th century, in this, the 21st century. Neighbors have been forced to move away because they could not telecommute. Our children do not have access to broadband to do school assignments. People think twice about buying our houses because they don't want to walk backward in time, thus affecting our property values. But Embarq, a monopoly in our area, watches its bottom line and ignores our requests for the service they provide others and blithely advertise to us, adding salt to the wound.

My father-in-law lives outside of Lost Nation, Iowa. It is a rural community of fewer than 500 people. Density there is about 10 people per square mile, far fewer than the 85 people per square mile in Chatham. Yet he has cable and access to broadband.

Ellettsville, Ind., is a rural area. Yet the small, privately held phone company there is investing $90 million in 48 months to bring broadband to their customers.

How are our school children going to compete with those in rural Iowa and Indiana, where they have broadband? How are our businesses going to grow and prosper when they cannot have Web pages—a necessity, not a luxury—because of lack of broadband? Why is a monopoly like Embarq allowed to give such disservice to its customers?

Marsha Derynck
Pittsboro