DATE: Sunday, August 3, 1997                TAG: 9708010252

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS     PAGE: 04   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 

                                            LENGTH:  135 lines

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - PORTSMOUTH

This is not a rebuttal of the letter by Dr. and Mrs . Royer, who are not members of and have not donated to the Portsmouth Humane Society, concerning the cat that nursed the puppies.

This is a letter to all who reacted negatively to the Portsmouth Humane Society because of that letter.

``Quay'' was one of the three cats that helped give the five puppies a chance when their mother rejected them. These newborn puppies had a slim-to-none chance of survival without a nursing mother dog to care for them, even with the constant care of the staff. Quay's motherly instinct give those puppies a chance.

Quay was a very pregnant stray when she was brought to us, and as a stray she had no past veterinarian care. She and the other cats nursed the puppies for about four days before we found a nursing mother dog to care for them. Soon after, and very suddenly Quay became ill, I decided to euthanize her. Her kittens had already died and I made the painful decision to end her suffering.

The puppies have been under veterinarian care from the beginning and it is costing a lot of money each day to keep them alive and well. If there is a chance to save an animal, I will take it. Who is going to help replace the money spent on these puppies when the shelter has more than 100 animals everyday that need caring for also?

As I watched the news report, I naively thought that although WTKR-3 had not mentioned that Quay had become severely ill, no one would think that we euthanized her because of space. I was wrong. Gerald Owens' report was about how people would care for their animals and how the public could help this shelter and other shelters. He noticed that shelters like this one need help when he came to film a spot trying to locate an owner of a dog hit by a car and was in quarantine. His story was about how people could help the shelter and that there were too many strays. It was a story about the staff caring for animals, giving love, compassion and pieces of themselves to each and everyone of the thousands of animals that come to our care. It was a report that was intended to get people to help the shelters; in all of Hampton Roads less than a half dozen people responded with food or money.

When the original story about the cats nursing the puppies was released, many people wanted to adopt the celebrity puppies but were not interested in the dozens of other puppies that needed homes. It broke my heart. About 10 people donated time, food and money and the Virginia Beach Petsmart donated a lot of food and litter. I let the Virginian-Pilot know of the cats nursing puppies because I thought that there should be good and hopeful news instead of the many reports of wrong-doing.

I am still amazed that with a report asking people to volunteer time and effort to the shelter, that the shelter received more phone calls with a negative response (before they knew the facts) that we had donate their time and efforts at the shelter. Why can't more people volunteer and help? Why do people expect the worst of others? A parting thought, no one would have known, I had not been asked about the cats. I thought people would just know that we care and do our best for the thousands of animals in our care and the need for people to get proper veterinarian care instead of allowing strays and many litters. I assumed.

Keith Jeter

Executive Director

Portsmouth Humane Society Inc.

June 8, 1997 Taxed for art

As artistic director of a national theater company based in New York City, I must, by virtue of reason and a commitment to individual rights and liberty, disagree with Ida Kay Jordan's defense of the National Endowment for the Arts.

I am all too familiar with art paid for by taxpayers. A city of Portsmouth employee from 1983 to 1991, I was the Parks and Recreation Department's so-called ``theater specialist.'' Through the department I founded in 1987, the award-winning and critically acclaimed Olde Theatre Co., producing six plays a year through 1990. In 1991 I was made facility manager of Willett Hall, booking and promoting that year's offerings - which included the successful ``Mandy Patinkin: Dress Casual'' concert.

Neither of these ventures received NEA funding: local taxpayers footed the bill.

I came to realize that the government has no right to force its citizens to support through taxation - which they have no choice in paying - art they would not otherwise value. Citizens have a moral right to resist when their government forces them to pay for art which they might, for any reason whatsoever, find objectionable.

Actors defending the NEA, such as Alec Baldwin, are considered artists and experts in the field because they star in privately funded films which often earn $10 to $30 million their first weekend in release. That the public spends this much money on film proves that the arts are alive and well in the United States.

While the NEA correctly argues commercial success is not the mark of artistic merit, neither is it an indication of bad art. To argue otherwise would be to strip Alec Baldwin, Jane Alexander and other NEA defenders of their credentials.

The title of Ms. Jordan's piece, ``Saving the arts is saving the soul of our nation'' betrays a philosophy regarding both the national soul and the arts which is out of touch with reality. Art can never save a nation's soul; art is the product of a nation's soul. Some art may not be worth saving. Some art may be great and still be immoral.

One of the greatest works of cinema, universally praised for its technical achievements and it's breath-taking beauty is ``Triumph of the Will.'' It gloriously revealed the soul of the government which funded its production. The soul being revealed was that of Nazi Germany. The film therefore is condemned, despite its beauty, as a work of great evil.

Alas, the propaganda of ``Triumph of Will'' is usually the end result when governments produce art. The politics of special interest groups (based on political, economic, religious, racial and gender interests) effect decisions of who gets funding and what constitutes art ``worthy of funding.'' The United States, founded on the protection of the individual, is being ripped from its philosophic mooring when such collectivist thinking creeps in.

According to the 1991 Census, there are 900,000 artists in the United States. It's preposterous for the federal government to pick out, by totally subjective standards, 500 of these and say, ``These are the ones deserving support. Even more preposterous is that over 60 percent of NEA goes to New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles - the commercial centers of music, theatre, film and art - cities to which, as Ms. Jordan points out, most people in the country can't afford to travel.

As one who works very hard in the arts and has been able all my adult life to earn a living from, why should I be forced through taxation (with jail being the penalty should I refuse to pay) give one penny of the money I've earned in the arts (that money being, in itself, proof that the arts are alive and well) to the very people (other artists) with whom I compete for an audience?

In business terms: Why use my success in the market place against me? The individuals making up the public support those arts which appeal to their own individual sense of beauty whenever they go to a movie or play, buy a video or CD, read a book or hang a painting, poster or photograph. Nothing the government does through the NEA will change that.

George Washington said, ``Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force.'' Whenever a law is passed or a government endowment is granted, it has the threat of police action and physical force behind it. The individual mind can never be forced to appreciate something. Thus, we have freedom of religion with its separation of church and state. The same philosophy should separate government, the use of force, from artistic sensibilities, the individual's reverence for that which he or she considers beautiful.

Rob Lauer

Bingham Drive

July 20, 1997

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