Ace of clubs
I have a suggestion for someone with more money than I can ever imagine. How about buying the Terrace Theatre building featured in the “Love me, build me” box in C-VILLE [The Week, December 6] and turning it into a rock club/movie theater. It could fill the void that Trax’s closing left on the Charlottesville music scene. Just think of it: music on the weekends, cheap movies during the week, maybe even get an ABC license so people could have a beer while enjoying a band or a movie. The location is awesome for bands on tour, and there isn’t very much housing close by, so I’m sure the noise ordinances are good for a club as well. Just a thought.
Bailee Hampton
Staunton
The fruits of vegetables
Thank you, C-VILLE, for Joyce Carman’s article “Bird is NOT the word,” in your November 22 issue. Please give us more like this with information on compassionate holidays! I enjoyed reading about healthy, fun ways to celebrate without cruelty to the planet and the other creatures with whom we share it. The websites for Farm Sanctuary, Vegetarian Resource Group and Compassionate Cooks have a wealth of ideas for creating lifestyles that are win-win-win-win-win.
Ms. Carman comments that adopting a turkey, instead of eating one, is “not exactly sponsoring a starving child in Darfur, but it’s a step in the right direction.” I strongly disagree—it’s more like a running leap in the right direction! According to UNICEF, every two seconds a child dies because of hunger; by the time you finish reading this sentence, three will be dead because they did not have enough to eat.
If ever there were a reason to consider vegetarianism, their lives are it. If we did not squander so much of our agricultural resources on meat production, these children would not have to die. In Guatemala, for instance, 75 percent of children under age 5 are malnourished, and yet that nation exports 40 million pounds of meat to the United States annually. Instead of feeding the world’s hungry, we take their grain and land to feed our addiction to meat, eggs and milk.
A massive shift in how we use the foods of our fields is needed to address the horror of world hunger. Meat consumption is incredibly inefficient—it takes up to 22 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal flesh. Eighty percent of the corn grown in America is fed to livestock. If we reduced our intake of meat by just 10 percent—if 1 in every 10 meals were meatless—it would free up enough land, water and energy to adequately feed 40 million starving people, the Worldwatch Institute reports.
It takes only 1/6 acre of land to feed a vegan, while it takes three acres to feed a meat-eater. Forty-thousand pounds of potatoes or 10,000 pounds of beans can be grown on an acre of land that would produce only 250 pounds of beef.
Compassion towards animals is compassion toward people. Vegetarianism is a powerful, sustainable, caring choice we can make three times every day—not only on holidays—to improve the lives of all of us!
R. S. Faris
Keswick
Back off the Breedens
I think I speak for a lot of people in Charlottesville when I say that I have been very disappointed and turned off by your paper’s portrayal of the Breeden family [“Southern Exposure,” December 6]. As Skyler Breeden pointed out in her letter to the editor—a clearly personal and heartfelt letter that was rudely titled “Breeden barks back” [Mailbag, December 13]—your article was misleading (if not just plain inaccurate) and certainly did not present the whole story. By leaving out the important fact that David and Elizabeth Breeden were not the sole owners of the thousands of acres in question (and therefore the sale of the land was not really up to them) you ignored a huge piece of the picture. As a result, the Breedens have been unfairly (and very publicly) portrayed in a negative light that is neither necessary nor justified. The Breedens have done so many good things for the arts, and for the community in general over the 30 years that they have lived in Charlottesville. They deserve to at least have their story told accurately and completely. Please show them a little respect.
Virginia Rieley
Charlottesville