Battery-powered carriages the way to go
You have to be someone my age to recall a time when milk was delivered by a horse-drawn wagon. In fact there were special days when East Passyunk Avenue was loaded with vendors driving horse-drawn wagons. I also recall when police rode on horseback. There used to be a stable right next to the police station on 12th Street next to my old grade school.
Where the Singing Fountain now stands at Passyunk and Tasker, there was once a water trough for all those horses. So there were horses everywhere while I was growing up. (You had to watch your step crossing the street.) Gradually most of these vehicles were replaced by cars and trucks.
All these memories returned when I read the article by reporter Samantha Bambino on efforts by the group Carriage Horse Freedom, founded by Janet White, to replace horse-drawn carriages with electric ones (“An end to horse-drawn carriages?” July 26). This new movement is intended to stop the cruel use of animals to pull these heavy vehicles as a tourist attraction for recreation.
Thanks also to the Women’s Animal Center for promoting the use of battery-powered carriages that resemble the older ones minus the suffering horses. Much gratitude to City Councilman Mark Squilla for his support of this humane movement to replace horses with electric power. And special thanks to Bambino’s article for including an address to make a donation to Carriage Horse Freedom to end this cruelty to horses.
Gloria C. Endres
Safer communities
In July, through a statewide Safer Communities tour, Lt. Gov. Austin Davis highlighted local initiatives funded by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency that are helping to address gun violence and make Pennsylvania communities safer. The Safer Communities tour visited Pittsburgh, York, Philadelphia, Allentown, Wilkes-Barre and Erie.
With the safer communities tour taking place with all its resources, including grants and technical assistance, hopefully in the state of Pennsylvania’s near future we will all be satisfied that through all political leadership parties that this was enough to completely end this gun violence, crime and drug abuse crisis.
There has to be a very strong political commitment force and effort to bring these guns off the streets. More opportunities of local police departments plus political offices having events like gun buyback or other ideas similar to that so most people willingly will give up their guns.
Unfortunately in this world especially the United States of America there are people who may know a person who has an illegal firearm in the household or may have used it in a violent manner. Removing that gun from the household is the main step toward solving this horrible crisis. If a family member knows another family member in that situation, they should bring in the gun voluntarily but with no repercussions.
In conclusion, our elected officials have to keep an intense focus on the gun violence that is happening across our neighborhoods. Because year by year starting in 2020, it has been a repetitive storyline of violence reported. This is not fair to anyone, especially our youth.
Alim Howell
