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 us at [email protected].

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Leopold Replies: The Timing is Right
Dear Bay Weekly:
Dick Dexter’s July 22 letter to the editor [Vol. XII, No 30] regarding my campaign for county executive was an incomplete account of political history.

In 1974, I gave up a safe seat in the Hawaii House of Representatives to run successfully for the Hawaii Senate. In 1978, I gave up a safe seat in the Hawaii Senate for a close but unsuccessful general election campaign for governor.

Having served nearly 30 years in elective state office, I sense that the time is right to run for county executive. Others apparently agree, as I have been receiving a positive reaction to both my door-to-door and fundraising campaigns.

As I have indicated, I have been willing in the past to take political risks and run for higher office. The timing is right to do so again in 2006.

—John Leopold, Pasadena: Maryland House of Delegates

Singing Dick Wilson’s Praises
Dear Bay Weekly:
Thanks to reviewer Dick Wilson for his very positive review of Amelia’s Journey [Vol. XII, No 30: July 22]. We all worked so hard to bring producer-conceiver Doug Schenker’s 14-year dream to life, and it is gratifying to know that objective professionals appreciate our efforts.

It is also so affirming to know that the story, music, staging and other production elements work. I wasn’t 100 percent sure until the Wednesday before we opened, but I still wondered if I was seeing the production clearly and not through my love, exhaustion and appreciation for the cast and crew. Now I know it really did all come together.

Thank you for supporting this community theater effort. Your review helped ensure a sold-out second (and final!) weekend. The review has flown through the cast. That celebrating you hear all up and down Ritchie Highway between Annapolis and Glen Burnie is my Amelia cast and crew!

—Eloise Ullman: Director, Amelia’s Journey

Still in Thrall to Lad A Dog
Dear Bay Weekly:
I was thrilled and moved to come on Lad A Dog in your summer books issue [Vol. XII, No 28: July 8]. Like editor Sandra Martin, I was deeply moved by that book when I was a child, and it’s stayed with me my whole life. I still have my original copies. Because of that book, I raised collies. My daughter and I are planning a pilgrimage to visit the estate in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, where Albert Payson Terhune’s books were set.

—Peggy Eversfield, Bethany Beach, Del.

Parole’s Sails Won’t Furl
Dear Bay Weekly:
Please reassure Bill Burton [“Marooned with no Landmark,” Vol. XII, No 26: June 24] that the familiar sails are there to stay on SunTrust Bank in Parole Plaza. We own the building and the .987-acre parcel on which it sits. Our renovation is complete, and our bank and sails will stay as they are regardless of what Greenberg Commercial Corp. does in creating Annapolis Towne Center on the property around us.

—Kathryn E. Miller: Vice President, Marketing, SunTrust, Maryland