Letters to the Editor

Volume VI Number 16
April 23-29, 1998

Peace, Harmony and Chocolate

Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:

I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I just wanted to send you compliments. I am very impressed with your paper. You guys are top-notch. You are timely, news-worthy, interesting, well-distributed and colorful. You all really have a great paper.

If my advertising budget ever surfaces (I'm functioning at the food, clothing, shelter level of survival - you know, the artist's syndrome) your paper will be the first I will consider for advertising.

Thanks for all of your support over the years. Folks say that they see my name everywhere, and that has a whole lot to do with NBT.

Peace, harmony and chocolate

-Mary Byrd Brown, Singer/Songwriter, Severna Park

Compost, Don't Burn, Chicken Litter

Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:

Burn chicken manure to make electricity?

Not unless it is the last resort!

Chicken manu re, broiler litter from Delmarva, has a very high organic matter content, something the soils of the Eastern Shore need, as do most Southern Maryland soils, worn out from three, almost four centuries of bad farming and depletive tobacco production.

One to two hundred pounds of broiler litter really heats up a two- to five-cubic-yard compost pile that's high in acidic oak leaves. Why don't the composters help use some of the Shore's surplus? What about using it by the hundreds of tons in the production of Compro or like materials?

Ideally, much of this broiler litter can be short-cycled back into the soil, utilizing its nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient values for crop production. If you think chicken manure is controversial, just mention the word incinerator and stand back!

Yeah, let's burn the odd stuff, like all the combustibles that shouldn't go into landfills and is so mixed that it can't economically be sorted for recycling, along with maybe some chicken litter. Generate electricity and/or steam to heat buildings and maybe even greenhouses to raise plump, juicy, red tomatoes in January.

But then again, there are people who go ballistic over fly ash out of incinerators. (There is an answer to that one, too.)

-Tony Evans, Annapolis

Editor's Note: Evans is a marketer for Maryland Dept. of Agriculture.

Alaskan Caught Up in the Web

Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:

M.L. Faunce's "Eagles" (March 26-April 1) might have been my favorite story - until "Living Trees" (Reflection, April 9-15). She gets better with each one. But then I am her very special Alaskan friend and so proud of her. Folks on Chesapeake enjoy the eagles. We count ours in twos to 10s - and in some places 50 and more. They are beautiful as they soar, but never disregard their natural sense of survival. It is real!

I visit your Web Site each week - www.bayweekly.com - and share your lives.

-Peggy Arness, Kenai, Alaska

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