School cafeteria would be an eyesore in Roland Park

Kathy Hudson's Opinion Commentary article citing Roland Park's renaissance as a result of "careful development, preservation and community vigilance" ("Roland Park's renaissance a lesson for city," June 8) seems prescient given community concerns over the proposed 42,000-square-foot, glass-walled science center and cafeteria building proposed by the Roland Park Country School.

The architect has proposed a hulking design and factory-like cladding singularly inappropriate to one of America's oldest and most historic planned communities.

The proposed location of the school's cafeteria and outdoor eating area (as well as its service entrance and garbage Dumpsters) on a hillside facing the community could create ongoing nuisances with noise and debris as well as delivery and trash vehicles.

Construction on the steeply graded hillside site could destroy the woodland buffer between the school and community; a comprehensive forest conservation plan to preserve the existing trees and hillside is a necessity.

The new building may also overtax existing utilities, such as a hundred-year-old sewer line on Deepdene Road, create improper storm water management and add to traffic and parking woes in the area.

Before the school moved to its present site in 1978, the city, school and the Roland Park Civic League agreed to enforce Baltimore city architectural and planning commission review of every new addition or building.

The school has held meetings with the community and represented that it would respond to suggestions and concerns.

It is therefore still hoped that civic and community review will produce changes in design, location of the food service facilities and landscaping to make the new building much less of a visual intrusion, nuisance and environmental concern.

Stanley Heuisler

Baltimore

To preserve the bay, save oysters, limit people

Congratulations to The Sun's Heather Dewar for her fine, nonpolitical article on the bay, "Tangle of trouble stifles life in bay," (June 13). This article should be required reading for all state policy-makers and environmentalists.

Then perhaps they will realize that everyone living in the bay watershed shares responsibility for it, and that attacking Maryland farmers, or some other single group, won't make the bay healthier.

Ms. Dewar correctly states that oysters are one of the bay's principal filters. At the turn of the century, there were enough oysters to filter every gallon of water in the bay every day. Today there are not enough to filter it once a year.

Why, then, are we allowing even one of these precious creatures to be removed from the bay? Wouldn't the half-million bushels of oysters removed last year have filtered some water this year?

Why is it bad for the bay if disease kills off some oysters every year, but acceptable for humans to remove them?

Part of the answer for the bay is a common-sense solution: stop short-circuiting the ecosystem.

Doug Burdette Aberdeen

The Sun's in-depth article on the health of Chesapeake Bay was quite comprehensive, even mentioning the strains caused by population pressures. The article mentioned several ways of dealing with those pressures, but said nothing about reducing population growth itself.

A successful population-control policy would begin by changing our generous immigration policies and such practices as granting citizenship to babies born in this country to illegal immigrants and naturalizing the relatives of new citizens.

Since immigration causes only about one-third of U.S. population growth, effective population policy would also have to change our pronatalist tax policies. One way we could do this would be to cut off child tax credits after the second child.

Any effort to cut the birth rate would have to be voluntary, but by offering incentives and disincentives we could reduce family size without coercion.

Doing nothing about population growth will guarantee the further degradation of Chesapeake Bay.

Carleton W. Brown

Elkton

Moratorium needed to save bay's crabs

Attention Maryland crab lovers: We must heed the warnings Dan Rodricks reported in his column "Time has come to give crab mallets a rest" (June 7). Maryland crab lovers have known for years, but been afraid to admit, that drastic action is needed to save the bay's crabs.

Biologists have warned that the bay's blue crab population is close to collapse. But it doesn't take a Ph.D. to know that the supply of crabs is not endless.

Many years of overharvesting and pollution have taken a heavy toll. If the watermen and sport crabbers continue to catch every crab they can, soon there will be no more crabs to catch.

To stop the crabs' decline, Maryland must at a minimum establish a protective "no crabbing" area. A better solution, though much more painful, would be a year-long ban on crabbing every seven years or so.

These crabs are a treasured national resource. The federal and state governments should pay watermen to sit out the crab season for a year, just as they pay some farmers not to grow crops.

If we are not careful, someday we may take our grandchildren to a museum and see a picture and say "that's a blue crab. We used to steam them in large pots by the bushel and eat them with cold beer. They were incredibly delicious."

Thomas A. Coplin Sr.

Baltimore

'Life' carries message that isn't funny at all

I completely agreed with Gregory Kane's recent column on the movie "Life." ("Moviegoers should stop getting a 'Life,' " June 9).

When the movie first came out, and other blacks at my job were talking about how funny it was, I brought them up short with the comment, "How could seeing us in jail doing life for something we didn't do be funny?" Their reaction: "Lighten up, it's only a movie."

But as tragedies in Littleton Colo. and other high schools around the country are proving, the messages contained in the entertainment young people are viewing and the ways some youth react to them are very serious issues.

I'm very disappointed that Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence sold blacks out by making this film, when they know that our prisons are filled with too many young, black people.

The message that they've sent to black youth with this movie is that it's OK to do life in prison; prison is a happy place full of all of your homies.

Thanks, Mr. Kane. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought portraying blacks doing life in prison as funny is dangerous.

Dana L. Owens

Baltimore

'Boondocks': topical humor, not study of race relations

The controversy over "The Boondocks" cartoon strip strikes me as much ado about nothing ("The Boondocks: racist or revelatory," letters, June 12).

All humor is topical. It's only funny if you can relate to the situation. "The Boondocks" satirizes the daily hassles and concerns of many of us African-Americans. It hits home for us in the same way "Dilbert" hits home for office workers.

The characters are no more stereotypical than the clothes-men-weight-obsessed "Cathy," and the strip is not nearly as violent as the weekly beatings Sarge gives "Beetle Bailey."

So, lighten up, folks. Its a comic strip, not a treatise on race relations.

James B. Parks

Baltimore

Corrections officers aren't just 'guards'

I take strong exception to The Sun's use of the term "guard" when referring to the men and women who work in the state's correctional facilities -- the toughest beat in the state of Maryland ("Four more disciplined in breakout," June 12).

These employees are correctional officers. They do not simply "guard" inmates; they perform a wide variety of law enforcement duties and are just as important in law enforcement as the police officers who patrol our streets.

Arguably, correctional officers have a tougher job, because they are constantly surrounded and outnumbered by criminals in a confined and stressful setting.

Until the media learns to respect correctional officers for the work they do, we cannot expect the inmates to respect them.

Tony Corbo

Baltimore

The writer is executive director of the Maryland Classified Employees Association.

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