In his recent letter to Xpress, Scott Smith calls vegetarians pushy. Not one "to refer to those who may be different in a derogatory manner," he then declares that most of the many vegetarians he knows are "excessively pale and overweight" and drink "large quantities" of beer. Hmm ...

Vegetarians are generally healthier than meat eaters. We have lower risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and many other ailments. We are less likely to be obese. It's not even close. Check out the statistics. It could be we are fairer and fonder of beer. I don't know.

While a plant-based diet is healthful, many abstain from meat out of compassion for animals. The "breathing" plants Mr. Smith thinks "need be slaughtered before their flesh can be eaten" are not sentient beings. Having no nerves, they cannot feel pain or suffer. To liken steaming broccoli to boiling a lobster is to trivialize real suffering.

Vegetarians are so pushy that occasionally one "assaults" sensitive carnivores by writing to the paper. Mr. Smith already ignores the battery cage and the slaughterhouse. Why not ignore the letter? His conscience is perfectly at peace with eating animals, Why is he so touchy when someone speaks against it?

Knowing what happens in factory farms and feedlots, what should vegetarians do? Mr. Smith, it seems, advises us merely to abstain mutely from contributing to a system we find objectionable.

Of vegetarians, he asks, "only that you live your lifestyle and be happy and let me live mine." By that logic, people who speak against slavery, intolerance of homosexuals, repression of women, and exploitation of children shouldn't. If Mr. Smith's neighbor enjoys a dogfight in his basement each Saturday night, who is Smith to complain? Should his poor neighbor have to endure relentless attacks on his lifestyle masked as letters to the editor?

Scott Smith wonders whether the next great war will be between those who eat meat and those who don't. It surely won't. Vegetarians are not very fond of killing. A war without killing would not be very great.

If I have been pushy here, I have assaulted nobody. Mr. Smith can ignore this letter or get angry. He can write a brilliant reply that humiliates me. He is free to ridicule all vegetarians while munching veal and wearing a vest made of baby seals. What he can't do is insist that vegetarians keep quiet and then expect us to.

We won't.

— Mark Noble
Asheville

I can no longer ride the bus, because of Asheville Transit's recently implemented "master plan." For one thing, it concentrates more on taking away/consolidating routes than significantly improving them. For another, it has resulted in the quadrupling of monthly bus fares. I believe these decisions made by the city were not only poorly thought out, but represent yet another blow to the low-income citizens of Asheville.

This would have been a reasonable plan had the city just taken these simple measures: 1) offered monthly fare discounts to low-income citizens, as well as to disabled/seniors; 2) gradually raised monthly bus fare instead of suddenly increasing it by 300 percent; 3) used a smaller bus for route 54 rather than do away with this route entirely.

Considering this abomination, I don't understand how we can refer to Asheville as a "green" city. We spend millions on unnecessary roadwork and expensive parks; yet we do little to address alternative-transportation needs for low-income citizens.

— David Hall
Asheville

We thought that by getting rid of Charles Taylor we were doing better. Heath Shuler has proved he is a DINO, Democrat In Name Only, as our un-representative. The health care and insurance industries gave the second largest amount of money to Heath Shuler out of all North Carolina's representatives, and this is what they bought: his "no" vote on healthcare reform.

Why did he refuse to hold real town hall meetings last summer? It wasn't the tea-party folks. He knew the majority who voted for him would be holding him to task.

Heath Shuler has enough money to buy his family any insurance they need, but he won't support your or my family getting what we need. It's time to make this DINO extinct. WNC deserves someone who will represent real people who live real lives — not a former football player who has not merely fumbled but handed the ball to the special interests.

— Andrew Weatherly
Asheville

We all know that sexual violence is a problem. The numbers are staggering: Every two minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted. We live in a society that accepts and perpetuates rape myths, which manifest themselves through our media and our institutions and affect our individual perspectives on rape. Ending sexual violence requires that we all challenge these myths and shift our cultural acceptance of sexual violence.

On Oct. 15, two hundred fifty people took a stand by coming together through a Community Forum to discuss ways to end sexual violence in Buncombe County. It was open to everyone in the community, and the diversity of people present was a testament to the indiscriminate problem of sexual violence: young, old, black, white, male, female, gay or straight — it's a problem that affects everyone.

Importantly, just as sexual violence affects everyone, everyone must be involved in the movement to end sexual violence. Tony Porter, the keynote speaker at the forum, spoke about the importance of men stepping up to work with women to end sexual violence. Indeed, the purpose of the forum was not to discuss the problem of sexual violence, but rather to discuss ways to end sexual violence. People worked in small groups to brainstorm ways to end sexual violence in our immediate communities. The results were inspiring and truly embodied community activism. Everyone signed a pledge to [take the] action from the forum into the broader community. Sexual violence will only truly end when everyone stands up and says 'No!' to continued violence against the girls, boys, women and men of our communities.

If you are interested in joining the effort to eliminate sexual violence in Buncombe County, please contact Our VOICE. They are currently seeking volunteers as victim advocates, community educators and outreach workers. Call 252-0562 for information.

— Alexandria Nicole Connor, Our VOICE
Asheville

This letter is in response to Scott Smith's letter [Nov. 4] about the pushiness of vegetarians. I want to admit two things — I still eat my Italian grandmother's meatballs when I visit, and I will most certainly eat meats from Hickory Nut Gap Farm —  but that are not the issues or concerns that I feel most vegetarians are preaching about. I don't buy meat, and I might eat meat once a month, if that. I am also a personal trainer who is of healthy body weight, and I brew my own vegetable-based evening entertainment.

I think vegetarians are concerned with the "lazy meat-eater," the one who eats fast food chicken 'n' biscuits for breakfast, Hot Dog King for lunch and fried chicken for dinner, washed down with their favorite high-fructose, corn-syrupy, 20-ounce drink — and the only green thing they encounter all day is the soggy lettuce they remove before they eat the burger.

People who hunt their own meat, clean their kill and eat it up are OK with me. But again, hunters are clearly the minority of people. Ask a kindergartner what animal is in their liverwort, bologna or hot dog, and they will blindly say "meat." There is a huge disconnect from our food, and the consequences of this is multiplied 10-fold by a disconnect from our meat. The waste of resources, the conditions of slaughterhouses, the corruption of the system that lobbies for slack restrictions on meat companies (so they can serve you a cheap product, so they can make their stockholders happy) and the clearing of natural landscapes to feed livestock (when was the last time you heard about the Amazon forest being torn down to plant more broccoli for the locals? this doesn't happen).

If the world is clear-cut so you can eat a crappy hamburger for a buck, then that is everyone's problem, including our health-insurance companies who will be paying for the bypass surgery or diabetes meds for the last 20 years of people's lives (until they finally pass away at the young age of 65).

Don't get me wrong; you can get a nutrient-dead tomato from China just as easily as you can get a hamburger from across the pacific. Vegetarians just want people to take more stake in their food and know where it comes from and the consequences of their buying dollar's power: If you buy it, it will come!

— Mark Strazzer
Asheville