Off-leash parks are a valid use of land I found The...

Off-leash parks are a valid use of land

I found The Sun's article "New leash on life" (June 30) a little biased. The personal opinions of the writer abounded.

The proposed off-leash recreation areas in Baltimore are a land-use issue, not a "people versus dogs" or a "green space for children versus dogs" issue.

Off-leash recreation is a valid recreation activity. The city allocates resources and land to maintain tennis courts, basketball courts, softball fields, gardens, pools, golf and other facilities for people who wish to engage in these activities. And, when a sizable number of people express interest in using land for an activity such as off-leash recreation, it is the Department of Recreation and Parks' responsibility to address the issue, as it has.

The department's purpose is to provide a recreation and parks system that is responsible and meets the needs of all the people of Baltimore, including those who wish to engage in off-leash recreation.

Baltimore should conduct a survey to determine the users-per-acre for each recreation activity or proposed activity that uses park land. I think off-leash recreation would have a number much greater than that of other activities taking place on our parkland.

Other cities have addressed this issue, and many off-leash recreation areas are already in use.

It's time for Baltimore to recognize the growing trend of urban dog ownership and establish off-leash recreation areas.

Melissa Garland

Baltimore

Civil War didn't turn on slavery

The July 1 Sun included two articles relating to the nation's perspective on the Battle of Gettysburg. For convoluted balderdash, no single newspaper issue in this reader's experience rivals the combined content of these two pieces.

Jamie Stiehm unabashedly presents as fact the sanctimonious myth that our Civil War was about slavery ("Gettysburg lingers in nation's psyche"), and Gary Dorsey contends that the South is perceived to have "won the memory" of Gettysburg, and then professes bewilderment ("The Last Battle").

If the South has prevailed in the hearts and minds of Americans, who could be perplexed?

Nothing is more fundamental to the makeup of the United States than the right to secede. If any state is without that right, the claim that ours is a free country becomes categorically indefensible.

And the war was not preceded by one attempt to secure emancipation of the slaves through some financial measure in which all regions of the country would have had to participate.

Accordingly, it is unconscionable hypocrisy to assert that the United States, a nation enriched with vast textile interests in the North that existed as a result of access to cotton grown with slave labor, while unwilling to undertake such a financial initiative, nevertheless opted to secure that emancipation by force of arms.

Dennis G. Saunders

Columbia

Distortions can tear us apart

Thank you for Jamie Stiehm's article "Gettysburg lingers in nations psyche" (July 1). It was beautifully written and timely.

The article's references to the historical perspective were quite interesting and deserve further examination. The South's canonization of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the disappearance of Gen. George Meade from historical presence is very remarkable.

For a few years as a child I lived in Texas. I attended elementary school and, as state law dictated, studied Texas history.

As this was the 1930s in the segregated South, I learned that "damnyankee" was one word, that the only reason the South declared independence was to get out from under the economic thumb of the North, that slavery had nothing to do with the war and, of course, that Lee was the greatest general who ever lived, with the possible exception of Sam Houston.

As a child being brought up by bigoted parents in a time of segregation, it did not occur to me that there could be anything wrong with the material I was taught in school. I accepted it as truth.

Now, as an adult who rejected the social values of my parents, I am extremely upset that history books in some states may be skewed to tear our country apart, instead of bring it together.

I think an investigation of this would be extremely interesting.

Frank T. Parish Sr.

Chesapeake Beach

Leave religion to the churches

Although I am normally a skeptic, I am forced to believe that the president truly holds the religious views he utters so frequently. But he was not mandated to carry them into practice ("Bush extols faith plans," July 5).

Being elected president hands one a license to take the oath of office. The election may turn on one's perceived moral and religious views. The oath does not. Under it, the president swears he or she " ... will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Nowhere does the Constitution, or the oath itself, make the president the proponent or custodian of moral or religious belief. To the contrary, according to the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ... "