In time with arts

When was the last time your doctor made a house call? Recently, my soft-spoken young doctor called to ask if he could come to my home and was here in less than 10 minutes — minus his medical bag! He didn’t make a house call to attend to my 75-year-old body, but to check out my Victorian Ivers and Pond piano, which is for sale.

After a brief examination of my dinosaur piano, he sat down and resuscitated the old dear by injecting it with a heavy dosage of Shubert, Chopin and other musical “drugs” of the past. He played for half an hour while he enraptured my very soul!

Why this little anecdote? Because it explains why the arts are so important and needed at our universities and public schools. Granted, we are going through some dark days in our state’s budgetary problems, but to eliminate theater, language and music from our academic curriculums is an educational amputation creating a straight-jacketed student.

Dr. Erik Steele articulates a masterful extended metaphor in his “Health reform — the real work begins” (BDN, Mar. 23). Literature and creative writing for Dr. Steele are not his primary source of income nor is playing classical piano for my physician, yet it is in their knowledge of the arts that they can express their inner thoughts and feelings. And no student should be deprived of this experience.

Without the arts in our schools, the “Race to the Top” students who reach that top may discover a most limited view of life.

Elizabeth Jalbert Pecoraro

Fort Kent

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Single-payer foreshadow

I taped Obama’s April Fool’s Day speech in Maine so I could go over it carefully, and, I must say, it struck me as a bit peculiar in spots.

Some time after reiterating his “promise” that we could keep our present health insurance if we wanted to, he explained that “We’re setting up a pool, using the private market. … Everybody who can be part of this pool is going to get a better deal. … Members of Congress are going to be a part of this pool … so you’ll know it’s good because they’re going to have to use it for their own families.”

“Going to have to use it?” I thought everybody had a choice! Why should anybody, including members of Congress, “have to use it”?

If members of Congress “have to use it,” does that mean that the rest of us do not “have to use it”? Or is this an indication of the single-payer, government-controlled, socialist program Obama plans to have in place “down the road?”

Sylvia Leigh

Old Town

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All is not well

I read with interest the March 29 piece about the increasing poverty in which many Maine children live. That poverty can lead to further jeopardy, some arriving with teen years. Recent events: a teen shot to death a few blocks from the Bangor library, a friend of the victim beaten on the head by another teen wielding a hammer. Less than a year ago, a young girl was killed by a man with a sword in a shack by the river.

It is my belief that young people deserve a place to call home, food to eat and warm blankets, and when they put their heads on the pillow at night it should be with the surety that they are safe.

In thinking of this misery, I come to the drug and life assessment survey that schools administer to get a handle on what is going on with the young folk. But not in Bangor. Bangor’s school board forgoes federal drug intervention money, rather than administer this survey.

Why? It is true the test takes an hour; but so do pep rallies and sports. Why the refusal? Is this because the enormity of the problem would make us look bad? If we’re worried about looking bad, remember the boy sprawled on the pavement in the puddle of blood, or the hapless girl in the shack by the river.

If the board continues to refuse, we need to go to the council and demand that something be done. We need to stop pretending all is well. All is not.

Cynthia Vann

Bangor

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Disappointing meeting

I was disappointed after attending the final informational meeting about the HoltraChem cleanup site before the recall vote in Orrington.

The meeting was put on by the Maine DEP. After the presentation, I had more than three pages of questions about the discrepancies between this presentation and the one I attended earlier that was put on by a consultant hired by Mallencrodt. Unfortunately, after the obligatory rant by the Maine People’s Alliance, I had only time to ask two questions.

More troubling was the “my way or the highway” attitude by the commissioner. The commissioner showed that he is anything but an unbiased arbiter. He attacked the consultant’s integrity when in fact the consultant is in the best position to find a balance between business and the environment. The market will demand he be reasonable in his solution, or he will not be hired for future projects, while he also needs to maintain his scientific integrity, or his solutions will not be taken seriously and he will be of no use to future customers.

The commissioner is under no such restrictions. Full cleanup will be just another notch in his political belt. In fact, I tried to ask, since the Maine DEP had made the rules under which these sites were constructed, did they have any culpability? To paraphrase his answer: No, the state makes the rules, the businesses assume all the risk, we collect our money, but “Maine is open for business.”

Jeff Hopkins

Orrington

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Drug questions

I read with interest the March 25 story reporting that illegal marijuana growers in northern California fear their crops would lose value with the legalization of marijuana. It’s true, they will, and maybe we can take a lesson from that.

The illegal drug trade fuels an entire economy, from the police who chase those who use, manufacture or sell drugs, to the prisons that house the perpetrators, to businesses that use the money for supposed legal purposes through money laundering, to politicians who come upon the money in quite remarkable ways. Those people involved fight against the legalization of marijuana and other drugs, including a big offender — heroin. It’s a good living.

Our present system that supposedly fights drugs doesn’t work. We are in Afghanistan killing the Taliban, who only have power because of money they obtain from opium (the source of heroin), which in turn is sold for high profit to our own citizens. People 100 years from now will be laughing at our stupidity.

Should we legalize heroin, but only at government-run clinics where addicts can get their fixes in a safe manner and also be exposed to rehabilitation at the same clinic? The price of poppies would collapse in Afghanistan, as would heroin-related crime with its senseless killing and imprisonment in the U.S. Is it worth considering? Or should we just go on killing and being killed?

Philip C. Groce

Union