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 •
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More Good Reasons to Take the Buy Local Challenge
Dear Bay Weekly:
I have been a committed reader of your publication since its inception and have always been pleased with your dedication to preserving the natural resources and beauty of the area. You have been a consistent supporter of the local growers in the region, and I thought this an appropriate time to pick up my pen (well, sit at the keyboard) and convey my appreciation for your efforts.
We are rapidly approaching the time when we can all take the BUY LOCAL challenge and stand with you in the ongoing struggle to preserve farmland and the independent farmer. Expanded hours at farmers’ markets, the spread of roadside produce stands and the Maryland acreage that has shifted from tobacco cultivation to the production of edible products comes at an appropriate time for an economy that is slowly being choked by high energy prices.
On the average, food products in America travel almost 1,500 miles from producer to consumer. A committed effort to buy local by enough consumers will have a positive effect on reducing our oil consumption. It also offers the hope of profitability to the local family farmers who work tirelessly to deliver quality crops to the community.
Buy local week runs from July 17 to 29, and I hope everyone can commit to eat at least one item daily grown by our local farmers. I am confident that, once everyone discovers the quality and freshness available locally, they will become converts to this growing cause.
–Leslie Dickey, Prince Frederick
Editor’s note: You know what they say about great minds thinking alike. This very issue is dedicated to buying and eating local, in honor of So Maryland So Good’s Buy Local Challenge.
On Turtles, Ticks and Sunburn
Dear Bay Weekly:
Please tell Dennis Doyle that demonizing snapping turtles by using such words as monster, beast, evil [The Monster Bite: You bait your hook and take your chances: Vol. xvi, No. 27: July 3], he may be giving some people permission to kill them. A turtle is a turtle and only takes on those characteristics from his Point of View. I’ll never forget the article (not in Bay Weekly) about the women who hired someone to kill snappers in her pond so they wouldn’t harm the beautiful mute swans.
On other subjects, I did enjoy the book recommendations in the same issue: All over the place!
In the new issue of July 19, you published a long letter about deer tick bites. I just had a deer tick bite, and the doctor gave me two doxycyline within 48 hours as a prophylactic along with the information that they were no longer testing actual ticks: expensive and often leading to false results. I just checked the CDC web-site that is mentioned in one of the myriad articles on deer ticks. But since Lyme disease is contracted in a low percentage of bites, taking action beyond getting the tick off is not necessarily recommended. Still, as a master gardener in Anne Arundel County, I would recommend calling one’s doctor at least to discuss it and not waiting until symptoms appear.
P.S. We love Bay Weekly and its environmental cast. I gave the sunscreen information [Dock of the Bay: Vol. xvi, No. 28: July 10] to my daughter for the new grandson.
–Judy Graham, Annapolis
Velociraptor? Who Writes Your Editorials?
Dear Bay Weekly:
Congratulations on scooping The Washington Post Sunday Magazine (July 13) with your July 3 Summer Reading Issue. You did a much better job.
Also, nice editorial in the July 10 issue, with a clue to who really writes them in the sentence “The sun is hot by now, and I probably need to shave again.”
But wife Sue wants to know what a velociraptor is.
And last: That photo. Once a year it seems that you just have to have a photo to make people sit up and write a letter to the editor. I suspect that Mr. Sombrero will be the photo this year.
–Steve Kullen, Port Republic
Editor’s note: Remember Jurassic Park? Those toothsome, horse-headed dinosaur-creatures running through the kitchen and gobbling up bad actors? Did you get a look at their feet?
