Good, but not that good

Good, but not that good

EDITOR:

Milan Paurich’s review of the Youngstown Playhouse production of “Beauty and the Beast” left me wondering if we had attended the same play. The review focused on Stephanie Ottey, who played Belle, so much that I felt very uncomfortable and nauseated after reading it. Mr. Paurich’s review of this play leaves the reader feeling that he is awestruck by Ms. Ottey. Although Ms. Ottey’s performance was very good, she did not leave me with the feeling that she could easily win an award.

Until I read other observations made by Mr. Paurich that I noted during the performance, I realized that we were watching the same play. I agreed with the first act being to long and a couple of the numbers could have been cut. The one high point of the play was the musical number “Gaston.” This number was fantastic and deserved recognition, yet not one word was mentioned by Mr. Paurich.

Mr. Paurich needs to wipe the stars from his eyes and review the whole play, not single out one persons’ acceptable performance. However, this review is a wonderful addition for Ms. Ottey to include in her resume when applying for all those Broadway shows.

KATHY ROGERS

Youngstown

Questions raised about Trumbull pound operations

EDITOR:

The Trumbull County dog pound and county employees are not only not allowing citizen volunteers who simply wish to photograph and list the poor pound dogs on the Internet in a timely fashion so they can be found by owners, adopted or rescued, they have increased the level of intimidation against those who are just trying to keep dogs out of their gas chamber.

Last week two women were greeted by having photographs taken of their license plates and persons. And then someone claiming to be representing the county government showed up out of the blue, saying he was authorized to “fix” things and mediate with the Friends of Trumbull Pound Dogs volunteers.

This man threatened to call the dog warden in the county where one of them lives, to claim she had too many dogs, and misquoted Ohio law to claim that Ohio dogs may not be adopted out of state. He wanted to know what it would take to keep them from coming back to take pictures of the dogs.

He also insisted that they want “absolution” from the volunteers to be posted on the Internet within two weeks. In other words, for our group to say that all is well with the Trumbull pound. We’re not sure how that could be possible or desirable, since they have made few improvements in the last six months.

We want to know what in the world is going on at the pound, other than them properly caring for the dogs, learning how to fill out the paperwork, and getting dogs listed themselves on www.petfinder.com in a timely fashion ... like before they are ready to kill them in the gas chamber.

No one I know in rescue that has had to face this kind of duplicity, threats, condescension and lack of cooperation at any well populated and well-funded county pound in Ohio to the level we have at the Trumbull pound. We cannot believe that no civility and no order can be had at a small four person department, funded by the taxpayers.

JUDY BYRD

Canton