The meeting

Last night a group of about 55 met at the local VFW to discuss ways to stop development in the county. Particularly an impending development that comes before the planning commission Monday night.

One thing that really upset me during the meeting was hearing people say, "We just found about it Friday." I wrote about the issue and the story ran on August 23. That was two weeks ago, not Friday.

Apparently none of these people read their local paper. If people would read something instead of depending on the TV "news on your side" they might actually learn something about the world around them.

Do people want their news spoonfed to them? Why are folks too sorry to pick up a paper at the grocer, or subscribe? It's 50 cents on the newsstand - is that too high a price to pay to learn about the community you've chosen to live in?

And then to whine because they don't know what's going on. I think they don't care what's going on. Maybe they work in Roanoke and care about the city because something might affect their favorite parking space, so they read The Times. That's better than nothing, but it doesn't specifically cover this county.

And then there are people who read NOTHING.

This is a major dumbing-down of America, and we're all paying for it. We're paying for it with a "peak oil" crisis, with water issues, with overcrowding of neighborhoods, with sprawl, with loss of farmland, with pollution, with loss of timberland, with loss of life. Not knowing affects each and every one of us each and every day. We are all being killed by what we don't know.

But it's that screen glowing across the room that demands attention. Everyone's busy feeding it their mind cells, plucking their brains out one by one, hour by hour.

Why not read, and take in more than one source of information to sort it all out. If all folks do is watch one TV channel, the sources are limited and sometimes tainted to the point of being unrecognizable. Read!