Letters to the editor

Too Much Booze

I was flipping through the magazine and noticed a very cavalier attitude toward, and essentially a promotion of, alcohol use. From recipes for alcoholic drinks to an alum article about essentially a binge drinking road race and another article about climate change that ultimately markets several California wineries. It struck me as odd for a university magazine and from a public health perspective coming out of a pandemic known to have exacerbated alcohol use disorder for many people. You can do better.

—S. Callahan, BSPH '07 (MPH), Greensboro, North Carolina

I Saw Signs, Too

I was struck by the story editor Greg Rienzi told about the butterflies that visited after his mother's death. My husband and I were bird lovers. Two weeks after his death in 2019, I was sweeping the front porch and found a large black feather. My husband had black hair. Not a week later, I was in the house and heard a loud chirping. It was coming from a small bird perched on the ceiling fan in the sun porch. I approached it and talked quietly to it—not a sign of fear or distress from my visitor. It just kept singing. I opened a screen so it could fly out. It stayed a little while and then left. Two weeks later, more chirping and another bird in another room. Same result. I have lived in this house for 20 years, and those were my only two bird visits. I don't tell this story to many people, but I thought you might like to hear it.

—Burt Lundgren, BSPH '88 (MPH), Norfolk, Virginia

Correction: In the summer feature story "Murder, She Writes," we reference a "family trip to India to visit Hindi relatives in Bengal and elsewhere." We should have said "Hindu relatives." In the same story, Parsees are referred to as "worshipers of the prophet Zoroaster." To be clear, Parsees believe in one God, Ahura Mazda, whose word the prophet Zoroaster preached. We regret the errors.