Letters to the Editor for Thursday, May 23

Fee for kayakers hurts Nevada’s tourism base

My name is Sage Donnelly and I am a 12 year old aspiring Olympic slalom kayaker from Carson City. I compete all over the nation and I am training for the 2016 Olympics and hope to represent Nevada and my country. A new law was recently enacted that charges $5 per boat per year. This law is unfair to kayakers and I believe it will be detrimental to the state’s tourism industry if allowed to continue.

As a kayaker, I have 8 boats that I use for training, costing me $40 a year just to put my kayaks in the water, which doesn’t include the 12 boats my parents have that accompany me on training sessions, making it an additional $60 per year, $100 total just to train in my home rivers. I am also aware of the huge amounts of people that come from around the world to play for a day in the world renown Reno Whitewater Park. This weekend’s festival brought boaters from all over the world. The new fee requires these participants to pay $10 for the pleasure of boating here, which will make many of them bypass Nevada and continue on to California where there is no permit fee for their boats.

I hope you reconsider this law and make whitewater kayaks part of the exemption list or we may lose a valuable source of income for the local businesses and lose part of the appeal Northern Nevada has to offer.

Sage Donnelly

Carson City

Bible has undergone scrutiny for centuries

If the newspaper did as Gretchen Godfrey wishes in her letter of May 15, her letter could not be published. She began with, “Please stop publishing letters based on religious faith,” and then proceeded to preach her own faith. Gretchen should study the evidence before making broad statements. She writes, “The Bible has been translated into different languages many times so no one knows its original content ...”

The truth is that the available Bible manuscripts date from only 30 to 150 years after the events recorded, and there are more than 30,000 original manuscripts in existence and the differences between them is miniscule. This cannot be said for any other original manuscript. By comparison, the earliest existing documents on Roman history are 900 years after the events and only 20 original documents exist. For Gretchen to claim that the Bible is “a heavily edited production created by men at Nicene” is an outright lie. The manuscripts are available and have been carefully scrutinized for centuries.

Gretchen credits Confucius with the golden rule. The truth is many ancient cultures had versions of the golden rule. Jesus didn’t claim it originated with Him, He simply included it in His sermon on the mount (Matt. 7:12). At another time He referred to the Great Commandments received by Moses to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:34-40).

Unlike Gretchen, I respect and thank the newspaper management for allowing both of us to publish letters.

Don R. Drake

Carson City