In a Sept. 21 Asheville Citizen-Times article, Tom Sobol said he would seek input from representatives of various animal-rights groups. He said, “We’re putting the board together to get all these groups who have an interest in animal welfare to the same table.”

Not one representative of an animal-protection group was appointed, except for Bill McKelvy, who represents Friends for Animals (FFA), the very group that this board was created to oversee.

FFA has the $650,000 county contract to run animal services, and the public is in an uproar about the gross mismanagement of the animal shelter and animal control. The employees who left FFA in a mass exodus complained about sexual harassment by Marc Paulhus, the executive director. They complained of his lack of management skills, abusive behavior toward the employees, and lack of compassion for animals. The latest financial statement shows that FFA has been hoarding county money, rather than spending it on animal care. There have been complaints of cruel treatment [of] the animals, and of animals not being placed when homes were available.

This will definitely come back to bite the commissioners. They, obviously, have no interest in improving management of animal services.

— Terri David
Asheville

The paving of Lake Powhatan (and other outrages)

by Klaus Martin

There’s a place I go in north Buncombe County where woodpeckers hammer and breezes knock branches together in a forest of naked poplars. On summer and fall afternoons, I often hear grouse thumping in the brush. When I stay overnight, owls punctuate the darkness with their hoots and glide through my campsite without a sound, to get a closer look. It’s a slow place that knows only increments of seasons and moons, where vegetation grows and then subsides, like an annual tide rising and falling.

Over the years of my solitary visits there, I’ve been impressed with its completeness unto itself, and how unnecessary I am to its rhythms and its perennial fecundity. It remains, as yet, unviolated by roads and cell phones. Although I’m sure it has seen loggers and farmers in the last 300 years, this place is the closest thing to natural that I’ve come across in the Southern Appalachians.

Knowing it’s there — and knowing I can make those visits whenever I wish — helps me to carry on my life in a city of barking dogs and parking meters. At my downtown office, I sometimes look out over the streets and try to imagine the time when the city of Asheville, too, was nothing but a series of silent mountain folds — harboring turtles, old-growth chestnut, mountain lions, wild orchids (and, of course, the native Cherokee).

That was a long time ago. Today, we have to search for the natural. I consider myself fortunate when I find it, and unfortunate when I lose even a portion of it.

I hadn’t been to Lake Powhatan since 1992. Last spring, I took a walk out there and was saddened to discover they’d paved the gravel roads and parking lots with asphalt.

Gravel is, at least, a local, earthen material. Local plants and ground cover grow up through gravel, and you can hear it crunch as you move across it. It kicks up dust in the summer, so visitors have to drive even more slowly, if they don’t want to be rude. Sometimes, the gravel is of interest to the young children from the city, who’ve never seen such a thing before.

On the other hand, it’s a struggle to redeem the asphalt at Lake Powhatan. It’s black like oil, hard like cement, fast like an interstate, dangerously silent, and as generic as any other patch of paved earth. I was very sorry to see the gravel buried deep under a petroleum product. It has made Lake Powhatan less like the woods — and more like the city from which we often seek respite.

We’re into progress up to our chops, and we can’t seem to help ourselves. We’re carpetbaggers descending upon the South — two days or 200 years ago. We build our little farm roads with pick, shovel and ax — which through the decades and the centuries, get graveled, then paved, then superseded by interstates that dominate the landscape. Then we find ourselves running to a quiet mountain cove that is still unimpinged, where we feel like we’re in heaven.

I often ask myself why we perpetually wage war on the natural. Then, the other day, I received a flier from a funeral home that gave me a clue to the answer. They were advertising burial vaults, because “above-ground entombment fulfills a heartfelt want — complete and permanent protection against the elements of the earth.”

The marketing pitch assumes that we regard the natural as a kind of criminality: something offensive, intrusive, invasive — something that must be defended against, if we are to achieve our heart’s fondest desires.

So, taking note that these were the ideas of an undertaker, I went back up to the mountain cove, where I kicked up a weathered turtle shell tangled in the dead grass. A large, seed-eating mammal had deposited two piles of purplish scat. I got down on my knees and examined them with a stick — wondering what left them, and when.

I never know what to expect of the place; it always happens of its own accord, without malice or threat — and without any input from the likes of me. I prefer it to the city’s rush, bustle and consumption. I prefer it to Lake Powhatan’s monotonous asphalt. And I certainly prefer it to an above-ground vault.

[Klaus Martin lives and works in Asheville.]

Kudos to City Council for enacting the “stool rule”

“Steaming dog feces” [Jan. 26 commentary, “The stool rule,” by Allison Frank] on Asheville’s downtown sidewalks may not be the city’s “most serious problem.” But, hey, what’s wrong with a new discussion — one that was finalized through City Council with an end result?

I guess the main argument [as Frank put it] for “[taking] issue with our city’s leaders for enacting [the new ordinance],” as always, is related to cost. Technically, we have already expended time, energy and money to remove the “organic waste” (“waste” being the operative word here) from public/private areas, which certain “laissez-faire” pet owners have left in their wake. From personal experience, I know I have. Therefore, if that same time, energy and money is transferred to enforcement, all relevant costs are equal.

Yes, there are “woodsy detours” close to our urban center where dog owners can let their puppies “unburden themselves.” But, the fact of the matter is, some of those woodsy detours are on private/public treed property, and others are planted sidewalk-beds that are wonderfully maintained by downtown residents and business owners alike. And, maybe it was different in the era of Mr. Ed or Dr. Dolittle, but I truly don’t believe that a pet owner can relay the message, “Hey Rover, just hold it for a few minutes. We’re on our way over to the public park that has been created for your use.”

Then there’s the proposed theory of shifting the responsibility to Mother Nature. Biodegradable or not, what happens in a drought season? No “little rain [to] poof the stuff away” existed last summer. And, about those puny $10 fines? I don’t believe “incentive” is passed along via the amount of the fine (local outstanding parking-ticket balances will prove this). Hopefully, the incentive will come from the awareness (presently nonexistent) that will be pressed upon certain pet owners. To be exact, others (like myself) are no longer willing to tolerate picking up after your hound.

In addition, this new “pooper-scooper” ordinance may not be just about who is responsible for picking up those “vile-smelling, brown” piles left on public/private property alike. It also may transcend to the subject of those pet owners, themselves, who impose “egregious transgressions” against their own dogs. You know: Those certain owners who tie their dogs up to downtown parking meters (leaving them to sit on concrete paving) while they go and sip cups of coffee for hours on end. Let’s face it, there are people who should never be given the privilege of owning a dog. But, just the same, maybe Friends For Animals (via this new “ludicrous” law) will [instill] some insight into the minds of these certain pet owners:

1. Take responsibility for those living things that you have chosen to have in your life.

2. You can no longer casually transfer the one unpleasant responsibility of pet ownership onto others.

Thanks goes to City Council for adopting ordinance number 2631! And, to those “laissez-faire” dog owners: Pull out those “doo-doo” bags.

— R. S. Lantzius
Asheville

Be proud of your heritage, even if it’s controversial

People should be proud of their heritage, regardless of the history behind it. The ideas and dreams that their ancestors fought so hard to fulfill and to preserve within their era shows a quality of martyrdom that has almost deteriorated into extinction as future generations marched forth. Whether or not the ideologies that they contributed to the world seem unfair or unjust to us now, centuries later, should be irrelevant to their sense of pride. As humans, we are all prone to flaw or error — but without those imperfections, forgiveness wouldn’t … ever [have] been born. [The] mistakes we make show us a hope in unity, in the sense that we — in order to be forgiven — have to reach out and ask to be forgiven. Somewhere in this age, society has forgotten how to forgive, and how to be forgiven. Or so it seems.

For example: When will the African-American population finally feel appeased for the way that my forefathers treated their race? It seems to me that the issue of slavery is in the public eye more often than it was when it actually existed. The guilt that the NAACP is trying to push on to the Southern Caucasian individual is overwhelming — and very unnecessary. The racial ignorance of this generation is separating us more now than the civil mistakes of the past did back then. And we had nothing to do with that. Where will this all really end? In the American courthouse or in the human heart? Why must social attitudes be reflected by our bloodlines, instead of who we are now?

I’m pondering this now — at the beginning of a whole new century — because an age-old controversy has once again risen in the United States. This time, it targets the symbol that has represented the significant and historical importance of my ancestry. It bothers me that the NAACP has been trying to have the Confederate flag taken down from over the courthouse in South Carolina. The news of this controversy has been highly publicized, and it is breeding a lot of racial tension in the South. The media is throwing opinions out to everybody, and the opinions that are being stated are often stated without any truth behind them. What kind of image is being presented to the youth by all this? Is the Southern white teenager — looking to establish an identity in society and a sense of pride of who he is — benefiting from this? Or is he to feel some sort of heretical shame, which he shouldn’t?

Without a doubt, it is true that the South did play a big part in the racial injustices that plagued America at one time. And, yes, it may be true that some blacks may take offense in the glorification of the stars and bars, because it represents those injustices. But it is a historical emblem, nonetheless. And real constitutional freedom is based upon the idea that a person may not be [held] in the most popular opinion [for stating] their message, but will always will be entitled to state it anyway. Besides, the flag is only a symbol. Symbols are often [reputiated] by the message that they present, but those who judge those symbols often hold no patriotic creed to the message it portrays, therefore seeing fault in the individual that projects that symbol. That defines prejudice. That is judgment without cause.

The flag of the Confederacy is an imprint of what our culture once was, as ugly as that truth is. But it is also a part of our history and our heritage. Society has done more than enough to [make up for] the suppression of the African-American race. Why must we destroy the pride of the Southerners? It is not justified. What has been done has been done, and what will be done will be done. The groundwork for our future will never be set if we keep digging up the dirt of the past. And that is exactly what is happening here.

— Charles “Ocean” Green
Asheville

Miracle pups

Someone left a shoebox on Leicester Highway with four newborn puppies inside. Luckily, some kind people stopped and retrieved the box from the middle of the dangerous highway. [The puppies’] little innocent lives were saved. They were bottle-fed and cared for, and placed in loving homes. They are sweet, happy little puppies. They just want to give and receive love, like the rest of us.

I just want to know what is wrong with the mind [of the person who abandoned the puppies]; whoever did this cruel act will be punished in time, believe me. Go get help, in the meantime.

These are truly miracle pups. Thank the Creator for good people.

— Maggie E.
Asheville