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Letters to the Editor

We welcome your opinions and letters – with name and address. We will edit when necessary. Include your name, address and phone number for verification. Mail them to Bay Weekly, P.O. Box 358, Deale, MD 20751 • E-mail them to [email protected]. or submit your letters on line, click here

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Bigger Bucks for the Bay

Dear Bay Weekly:

Eight Belles is gone, Barbaro is buried, and countless other lesser-known horses will join them. Horses are dropping dead at racetracks all over the country; they just don’t always make the news. We can only wait and hope no horse will pay with its life in Saturday’s Preakness.

  Thoroughbreds are accidents waiting to happen: Their legs are too long and fragile, they’re forced to run while still young and growing, and injuries are often masked with drugs. Horses are viciously whipped; Eight Belles was no exception. If you’re like most people who only pay attention to horse racing on the three Saturdays of the Triple Crown, watch and see for yourself.

Even if they don’t garner headlines, horses routinely break down at regional racetracks and county fairs. And when their tendons snap or bones shatter, they aren’t given high-tech, expensive treatment. Their battered bodies earn one last dollar by being sold to pet food-rendering plants or to European butcher shops.

A laborious life, an ignominious end. People who care about horses should refuse to support a sport in which animals pay with their lives.

–Jennifer O’Connor, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Linked to Bill Burton?

Dear Bay Weekly:

I was at the Annapolis Main Street library last week to pick up a copy of my favorite newspaper and was happily surprised to learn that your colleague, Bill Burton, and I have something in common: a fond attachment to Goddard College. My youngest daughter, Valerie, was also a student at Goddard. After trying in American University, University of California at Santa Cruz and Sarah Lawrence, she finally found her niche at Goddard.

While Valerie was still a freshman, Vermont College bought Goddard’s writing program and she earned an MFA in Creative Writing without ever getting a bachelor’s degree. It sure saved me a bundle. Degree or not, Valerie has since gone on to attest to the quality of this little-known “alternative” college by winning the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets award, etc. It’s certainly a small world!

–Bill Wohlfeld, Annapolis

What Do You Know about Bill Burton?

Dear Readers:

Bill Burton celebrates 15 years with Bay Weekly next month. Help us prepare a retrospective edition, filled with memories, yarns, encounters and your favorite bits from his stories over the years. To freshen your recall, you can review his columns in 1993 and from 1998 to this week on line at www.bayweekly.com.

–Sandra Olivetti Martin,

Bay Weekly Editor & Publisher

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