| Good Stewards Needed
Dear Bay Weekly:
Increased community awareness of the need to care for natural resources that make up the habitat that sustains us all is the goal of the 2001 Soil and Water Stewardship Week, April 29 to May 6. The focus on this year's observance is the personal responsibility each citizen has to be a good steward of the land, water, wildlife and other natural resources that enhance our quality of life.
The concept of habitat, which most of us think of in terms of wildlife, has been expanded to include human and other living things around us that make up the place where we live. The basic elements of habitat are food, water and shelter.
It is common to think about people losing their homes and the quality of their living environments as being something that happens to someone else or in some other place. That may not always be the case. As we see sprawling growth take valuable farmland, read about a town's drinking water being polluted by a chemical spill or watch helplessly as a flood wipes out farms and towns, we are witnessing a steady loss of the habitat that is needed for life by all people and living things.
"When an animal or plant species becomes extinct, we are all a little less because of that loss," said Kenneth J. Carr, chairman of the Anne Arundel Soil Conservation District. "If that extinction occurs because we, as human, were careless or thoughtless, we bear the responsibility."
-Lillian Griffith, District Manager: Anne Arundel Soil Conservation District
For Burton, Better Cereal Choices
Dear Bay Weekly:
Just wanted to let Bill Burton know that sometime last year I realized the prices on those boxes of puffed air were outrageous. Now I buy only hot cereals, generic if possible, and save lots of dough.
I know it sounds boring, but there are several choices (tried Wheatina lately?) and endless choices for toppings, sweetners, etc.
Also forget those little packets of flavored instant oatmeal. You can achieve the same results doing it yourself. I have a feeling it's healthier too!
I enjoy Bay Weekly on weekends at my second home (but first love) in Plum Point.
-Betsy Detwiler, Plum Point and Falls Church
Good News Reads Better on Thicker Paper
Dear Bay Weekly:
Congrats on the paper's recent editorial awards and on your testy editorial , "C is for Chump" [Vol. IX., No. 14: April 5-11, 2001].
I'm afraid the sense of entitlement runs too deep in this country for student apathy to correct itself anytime soon; in the coming reshuffle, these poor overtaken shall be known as our sort of Droogs.
Fortunately there are many who do get it, and their light can be steered by.
I like the ecology of the new newsprint, but you're sending lots of readers indoors. Preliminary tests from my cockpit on a sunny afternoon prove one needs to be six to eight pages into the issue to have enough page density to actually read anything. The stock is so thin it lets light through like tissue.
-Peter Chapman, Galesville
Editor's note: I hope you'll see improvement in upcoming weeks, as newsprint quality is one of the reasons Bay Weekly is trying a new printing company.
Check again once you've read four or five pages this week, where you'll read about the advertising awards Bay Weekly's won in this year's MDDC Press Association competition.
Copyright 2001
Bay Weekly
|
