Summer heat, taxes, presidency, recycling carts, testing

Summer sounds

As I sat in my garden on spring mornings, only a stone's throw from the home of my neighbor, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, I would hear by the dawn's early light the mockingbird's trumpet to the morn, the golden saxophones of cardinals and the raucous drums of blue jays.

From afar would come the mournful tuba of a lonesome dove. All around the tinkling bells of sparrows. Sometimes, I would hear a fancy passer-by diva singing in an unknown tongue.

Now, it's summer and 85 degrees in the morning. I hear only an occasional songbird. It's too hot for the birds. They stay out of the kitchen. I am reminded of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, where no birds sing. Instead of birds, I hear the steady hum from mile-away, four-dollar gasoline traffic on the interstate, happy people with jobs bound for Arlington, Grand Prairie, Dallas or lakes beyond.

As July's sun, his beacon red, begins in earnest his daily Lance Armstrong grueling climb to the 105-degree mark, there comes, thanks to God and TXU, the soothing whir of the air conditioner. It's the sweetest music this side of the Bass, Miguel.

-- Don Woodard Sr., Fort Worth

Paying the costs

Two of our most popular and respected Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, raised taxes, the latter after saying, "Read my lips, no new taxes."

Why would they do a thing like that? Because they realized a tax increase was necessary to avoid a disastrous deficit. Would that our current Republican leadership were that discerning.

Writer Fareed Zakaria noted in a Time magazine article that the tax burden on Americans today is less than it was in 1950. Let's take a cue from "the greatest generation" and return to the tax rates that will actually pay what it costs to run America.

-- James D. Llewellyn, Fort Worth

Rush for president?

You know what I would like to see? Rush Limbaugh elected president of the United States, and any other of the know-it-all talk radio hosts as his vice president. I think it would be comical to see just what they could do and how long they would last before being run out of Washington, D.C., probably on a wooden rail as in the olden days.

Talking about what a president should do and being the president and getting it done is a 180-degree difference, especially when you have a divided Senate and House where nobody wants to work with the other in getting the job accomplished.

-- Paul Felts, Keller

No recycling carts

We read the July 4 story "Arlington looking at switch to wheeled recycling carts." We live near Hilldale Boulevard, which was included in a pilot program for wheeled garbage carts years ago. On garbage pickup days, after the carts had been emptied, they were all over the street, which was very unsightly and dangerous on windy days. Much better to have an empty milk jug or paper blowing into your car than a wheeled cart.

This will be a burden to older people and people in poor health. These carts will not fit in the garage and will have to be pushed from the back yard. In bad weather, people will not recycle if they have to go outside.

The containers we have now fit in the garage, right next to the kitchen door, and are easily carried to the front curb. Arlington is a tourist town and needs to be neat, clean and inviting, not littered with recycling carts.

We feel this is a very bad idea and will not increase recycling but decrease it. Residents do not need another fee to pay.

-- Tom and Lola Dillard, Arlington

Re-think testing

With all the new state educational testing programs designed to measure our students' progress, why don't we realize that not every student, no matter how well-taught, will be able to pass all portions of these tests? There are students who do not want to learn and are just in school, because state law mandates it.

Many students, once they leave through graduation or by aging out of the system, will never read a book again or use math or science skills that dedicated teachers have tried to teach them. Some of these former students would rather be employed as truck drivers, cooks, waitresses, factory workers, maintenance workers, etc.

Some of these students can be taught to pass the new STAAR test, but once the pressure is off, how much knowledge will they retain? Former President Bush's No Child Left Behind was a well-intentioned program but not suited to all students. It is time to re-evaluate the present educational testing system.

-- Richard Livingston, Burleson

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