Volume 14, Issue 37 ~ September 14 - September 20, 2006

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


Big Thanks from BIG Books

Dear Bay Weekly:

You ran a great article on our organization on August 17 timed to bolster sales at our public book sale on August 19 [“Breathing New Life into Old Books,” Vol. xiv, No. 33]. I think it added materially to the success of our sale, during which we took in $4,300. The article was excellent with the names correct under the picture and a positive pitch for our non-profit organization and its mission of Keeping Books Alive by collecting them and shipping them to Third-World locations.

We are struggling financially, and publicity really helps as we try to grow our organization, form a more solid foundation and expand our educational work. Thank you again.

—Robert Olson:

Parole Rotary Club BIG Vice President

Cleared by Doherty’s Good Ear

Dear Bay Weekly:

I simply loved Dotty Doherty’s Bay Reflections “Songs of the Woods” [Vol. xiv, No. 34: Aug. 24]. Amazing how this woman can distinguish between the serenades and mimicry of so many birds.

But I also loved her article for purely selfish reasons: Years ago while living in D.C., I would hear the birds outside our window mimicking car alarms. I had told this weirdness to my friends and roommate, who assured me that I must simply be going mental. But I repeatedly heard these birds not only imitating each alarm perfectly, but also doing it in the same exact order as the alarms. You’ve heard them: boooEY boooEY; Niar Niar Niar Niar; wooooIP, wooooIP; DUN DUN DUN DUN … (Now I’m imitating a mockingbird imitating a car alarm, maybe my friends weren’t too far off.) Regardless, I am very grateful for Dotty’s wisdom, as it has helped me confirm I am not quite as mental as some think.

—Gaby Romeri, Annapolis

Sometimes It’s the Bear

Dear Bay Weekly:

There I was, looking online at the letters to the editor in the Aug. 24 issue of Bay Weekly [Vol. xiv, No 34]. One of the letters, “Writing Urban Legends?”, talks about people being killed by grizzly bears in Alaska, and mentioned the Huffmans, who were killed last year.

They were the parents of a member of my choir, and they had lived and camped in Alaska for years. They had taken every precaution against bear attack (unlike the weird guy who communed with bears and got himself eaten because he put himself in the middle of a migration route), but were attacked in their campground anyway. Their daughter had sung with us only one season, and she dropped out of the choir to deal with the tragedy. She is such a nice person, and it is so sad that this happened. I don’t know how she is doing now, but I think about her often, and about how horrible it must have been.

The letter writer implied that bear attacks are generally the fault of the humans attacked, but in this case, I think it was not.

— Rebecca Buchanan, Seattle

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