It's all about me

In a recent news story, [June 17: "Quash game: How many subpoenas does a code violation need?"], Shirley Presley and Carolyn Reilly argue that they have strung razor wire across the Rivanna Trail because they are elderly and have a right to protect themselves against trespassers in the scary world in which we live.

I lived on Bland Circle for five years, and the fact is that the street sits on a ridge high above the river, separated from it by a thick woods lacking either trails or steps up to the homes of these two women.

Presley, who has lived there for decades, didn't even know a trail was down there until a neighbor told her.

Until Presley and Reilly had their forests demolished and piled along the river as a barrier to hikers, neither house was even visible from the trail. Any sane criminal would drive there and walk in the front door on a moonless night.

The razor wire is not about protection from the modern world. It's about nationalism on an individualized scale. It's about my property rights, my land, my power.

It's about an obsessive distrust of others, lack of community spirit, and a perverse interpretation of the American dream.

Sky Hiatt
Albemarle

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