Summer’s constant motion
Whatever happened to the “lazy days of summer”? Whoever coined that phrase certainly didn’t have kids in today’s society. These days, summer is anything but “lazy.”
Don’t get me wrong. We all start out with intentions of a slower pace come June. Even parents start to look forward to summer vacation as the school year wraps up. We grow tired of the same routine of making lunches, attending games and helping with homework.
Somewhere around the third week of May, another mom told me she didn’t know who was more ready for summer vacation, she or her kids.
I told her, “I’ll ask you again in a month.” That’s about how long it takes for the truth to set in that summer is not only far from “lazy,” but it is actually more hectic than the school year.
Any given day in our household will start with swim team practice at 7 a.m. and, depending on which week it is, continue from that point with swim lessons, drama camp, various sports camps and tee times. Then you have to factor in trips to the library (can’t forget summer reading), the video store and, oh yeah, I somehow need time to get to the grocery store to feed all these people.
And that only covers the daytime hours!
During the evening hours, someone usually wants to be driven somewhere with friends, which results in waiting up for them past my bedtime.
Every year I say we aren’t signing up for as many summer activities; nevertheless, we somehow still end up on the run.
But what is the alternative? Given a day of nothing, my kids would probably opt to spend most of it in front of a computer, television or video game. That doesn’t seem like a better option than constant motion.
One day last summer all four kids were home and the power was out for 12 hours. After getting over the initial shock of the loss of electronic devices (my 6- year-old son asked incredulously, “So you mean nothing works?”), they actually managed to have fun. They played old-fashioned board games, cards and even charades. Most important, everyone was together and everyone laughed . . . a lot.
Maybe that is the compromise: not a whole lazy summer but just a few really good lazy days.
— Ann Marie Roache, La Grange Park
Intrusive skateboarders
The expanded downtown river walk is a tremendous asset to Chicago, offering a peaceful place to stroll, people watch and enjoy the boat traffic on the Chicago River. But already some have found a different, disturbing and potentially dangerous use for the river walk. Skateboarders have used an area at the southwest corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue — one of the newest sections, below the McCormick Tribune Bridgehouse Museum — as a place to refine their jumps and skid moves.
Already one of the three linear concrete benches is scuffed from skateboards.
One recent afternoon, I observed a half dozen skateboarders commandeer the area and display boorish behavior. A bronze plaque directing people to the museum was used to hone skateboard wheels.
Chicago Police should adopt a no-tolerance rule on skateboarding along the river walk. Skateboarders have parks built for them with taxpayer money. They should use those facilities, not a public place designed for everyone.
— Edward M. Bury, Chicago
FedEx workers
Columnist George Will accuses UPS of “bending public power for private advantage” because it believes that FedEx’s workers should have the same right to organize as their peers at other package-delivery companies (“Democratic grudge match: UPS vs. FedEx,” Commentary, July 17).
But he neglects to mention that one reason FedEx’s employees aren’t unionized is because the company spent millions over the past decade lobbying Congress to preserve a legal loophole that restricts its employees’ right to organize. That sounds an awful lot like “bending public power for private advantage.”
FedEx’s chicanery doesn’t stop there. It’s threatening to cancel a multibillion-dollar airplane order — putting thousands of manufacturing jobs at risk — if Congress closes its labor loophole. That sounds like simple blackmail to me.
— Richard P. Michalski, general vice president, International Association of Machinists, Upper Marlboro, Md.
Misguided stimulus policies
In his recent letter to the editor, “Hungry for economic recovery” (Voice of the People, July 16), Ethan Pollack, policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, poses the question “Why wouldn’t we put another bird in the oven?” when referring to the need for another stimulus package.
What many Americans may answer, to further the turkey analogy, may sound something like this: If you make $14,000 per year ($14 trillion U.S. GDP), and you have a turkey in the oven that you borrowed $1,000 to buy ($1 trillion for the stimulus package), how is it sound policy to borrow another $1,000 for another bird?
Citizens of this country, rich, middle class and poor alike, will eventually pay for misguided stimulus policies with higher taxes, higher interest rates and decreased purchasing power of their dollars. This is not what we ask of our elected officials.
— Thomas P. Call, Chicago
Obama, pope not on same page
This is a response to “Benedict XVI, Obama in sync on economics” (News, July 8), by Tribune reporter Manya Brachear.Brachear tries to demonstrate how the pope and President Obama share an economic outlook. If all it takes to say that two people share a sentiment on the economy — in this case, that the economy needs a change of “focus” or “mentality” — then the pope and Obama would agree.
But so would radical communists and no-holds-barred capitalists. Everyone wants to give the economy a new focus — his or her own — but this obviously does not mean they are all “in sync.” Ultimately Obama and Benedict have dissimilar goals for the “shifts” they are calling for and are hardly talking about the same thing.
Brachear also notes that Obama believes that “the government needs to take care of American workers put in a bind by globalization.”
And the pope?
He says nothing of the sort.
In fact Brachear’s own citation of Benedict says nothing about government intervention but instead speaks about the sad fact that inequalities of wealth exist.
Yet we are supposed to believe because of the lovely parallel structure that Brachear has created and a quotation from a professed Obama supporter that that these two points are saying exactly the same thing and therefore put Benedict and Obama in agreement.
Puh-lease.
That logical gap is just as big as some of the potholes in the road this past winter.
— Rev. Thomas J. Doyle Jr., St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church, West Dundee
Clean house
The State of Illinois does not have a good reputation.
The Republicans are asking for ideas on how to reinvent Illinois.
First we need politicians who truly want to serve the people of Illinois.
I had hoped that after former Gov. Rod Blagojevich resigned, our state government would clean house — maybe not the whole house, but much more than what has taken place.
People involved in government know where the waste, unnecessary spending and corruption are.
It does not feel very good to be from one of the most corrupt states in our union.
A country is only as good as the least of its citizens.
Please take an honest look and then act in good faith.
— Nora C. Waliczek, Homer Glen
Bring back pride
I have been living in the City of Chicago, the County of Cook, the State of Illinois for the last 77 years, with the exception of two years in Korea.
I have been proud to say where I lived — until a few years ago.
Now I am ashamed because of the corruption and greed that are taking place in the State of Illinois, County of Cook and City of Chicago.
So wake up people and do your part in voting our leaders out of office.
— Louis Arvanites, Chicago
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VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
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