I read the article, “Learn to be healthier with holistic healing” and am very pleased. I have already received several phone calls from people interested in attending the class after reading your article. Thanks so much!
Gail Lowenstein, MD
Thank you - a lost art
I am an extremely generous person - always giving a little gift to family members and friends. I never give a gift in anticipation of a return gift, but I do expect some expression of appreciation for the gift sent - either verbally or in the form of a written thank you. Sadly, that simple gesture is rarely forthcoming these days.
Any etiquette book will confirm the fact that a thank you note should be sent within a week of receipt of a gift. The only exception to this rule is a thank you note for a hospital gift. In this case, the note should be sent as soon as the patient is well enough to do so.
A year ago, my family attended a wedding and we gave the bride and groom a four-digit cash gift and paid to attend the affair, which was out of state. I am still waiting for a thank you note. The excuse given by the bride’s mom is that her daughter is a busy attorney with “no time to pick out a wedding picture to accompany the thank you note.” To me this is inexcusable!
Just last week my tenants who live upstairs from me had a baby boy. I quickly placed a baby card and one of my crocheted blankets in front of their door. For a week, they entered and exited their apartment, walking past me without a word of acknowledgement for my gift. After a week, I approached the father of the baby and expressed my disappointment. Still he did not utter the words “thank you” but merely said, “Oh, I forgot about it.”
My brother’s two children used to receive yearly gifts on birthdays, Christmas, and Easter as well as for Communion, Confirmation and Graduations without my ever receiving a “thank you” call or note.
If I cannot change the behavior of these people, at least I can change my actions. There will be no gifts for any of these people in the future!
Rose Marie Puleo Milcetic
Whitestone
Open libraries evenings too!
Your July 19 editorial “Sundays must be next” was health food for the minds of all Queens residents. Thanks to The Queens Courier’s persistent editorials, columns, and articles along with numerous letters to the editor over many years, it appears that citizens will now have access to their local public library six-days-a-week.
The next step is to expand both evening and Sunday hours. The real question is why did it take New York City Council Speaker Catherine Quinn, Finance Committee Chair David Weprin and their colleagues so many years to find a few million dollars out of a $59 billion dollar budget for funding such a worthy investment?
Every year, each Councilmember shares in millions of dollars that they can spend on member item projects of their choice. Why didn’t they previously allocate a portion of these dollars for libraries within their respective Council Districts?
Larry Penner
Great Neck
Taxes on gas are high
Consumers are upset because the price of gasoline has gone above $3.00 per gallon. The reason prices are soaring does not have to do with greed. There are profits to be made, but the profits are not unusually high.
Between 1977 and 2005, the rate of return on gasoline in the U.S. averaged seven percent as reported by Carol Diehl, an economics professor at the Colorado School of Mining. This compares to returns over the same period of nine percent in durable goods and 11.5 percent for the S & P 500 industries.
Why are the prices rising? A major culprit is government regulation. There are many environmental regulations placed on energy development and resistance is exerted against the building of new refineries. No new refineries have been built since 1976. The refining industry has spent billions to bring the existing refineries into compliance with new and more stringent environmental rules. This is where the profits go. Some of the refineries had to be shut down because they could not meet the government regulations.
New Yorkers pay the highest gasoline tax in the nation at 60.8 cents per gallon. This compares to 13 cents per gallon made by the oil companies.
Setting policies that make the U.S. more dependent on unpredictable foreign rulers does not bode well for the future. An estimated 77 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves are governmentally owned. The answer is clearly not to have American legislators enacting ruinous energy-development policies which leave us dependent upon foreign fuel sources.
Janet McCarthy
Flushing
Too many banks
There are more than a dozen bank branches within a two-block walking distance of my Forest Hills coop apartment and this large proliferation of financial institutions has meant less space available for neighborhood retail stores.
That means my neighbors and I have had to walk longer distances to locate shoe-repair shops, bakeries, convenience stores, and places that sell objects that have real physical dimensions. To make up for the lack of retail businesses, fruit and sandwich carts have also moved in on the sidewalks of 71st Avenue.
To the best of my understanding, the primary benefit of these bank branches is to serve as permanent, three-dimensional billboards for the large banks that pay for them.
I do not know a heck of a lot about city zoning laws, but is seems to me that there ought to be some sort of limit on the number of banks that can operate in a busy shopping area. Otherwise, I believe there will come a day when you will be able to make a cash withdrawal but have nothing in the neighborhood to spend it on because there won’t be any retailers around.
Martin H. Levinson
Forest Hills
Letters To The Editor
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