Blue Bags
On Jan. 11 The Sun published a letter to the editor from Carl Aron of Catonsville asking why participants in the county's recycling program must set out their bottles and cans in blue plastic bags rather than bins.
The main reason for requiring plastic bags is that the bags cushion bottles and cans as they are trucked to the sorting facility, thus minimizing broken glass jars and bottles.
The current demand for broken glass of mixed colors is weak, and most of that material is not recycled. Of course, Baltimore County continues to explore options for marketing this material.
Blue bags offer a further advantage because they are easily recognized by collectors.
Each of the above points is included in the booklet delivered to each residence as Baltimore County's once-a-week recycling, once-a-week trash collection program expands to a new area.
Furthermore, each of the points was covered during the Jan. 3 community meeting attended by Mr. Aron.
Baltimore County is in good company regarding the use of blue bags for bottles and cans. For example, Baltimore City, Harford County and Howard County require blue bags as well.
I am pleased to report that Baltimore County's "one and one" recycling program now includes 80 percent of the county's 220,000 single-family homes and townhomes, and that the county's recycling rate continues to far exceed the state's mandate.
Charles Reighart
Towson
I= The writer is recycling coordinator for Baltimore County.
Academic Revision
In your editorial Dec. 26, "Teaching The Old-Fashioned Way," I liked your ending sentence: "It's time to broaden this old-fashioned approach so more city kids can succeed in school." -- and in life afterward.
Then on Jan. 22 you followed up with an article, "The 'Calvert Way' gets high marks -- Back-to-basics approach succeeds at 2 city schools." Good work.
I hope people are getting the idea. "Innovation" came into education about 20 to 30 years ago, when public eduction began to falter. The "innovative" stuff doesn't work.
When someone outside pedagogy dares assert that it is a waste of time, they are given the silent treatment or declared unqualified, even though the outsider is an employer and is expected to hand out paychecks to these dumbed-down products of the public system.
Two things are necessary to get public education back on track:
1. Basic subjects need not more than four classroom instruction hours a day through high school, say all in the morning.
The rest, for the afternoon, is mostly baby-sitting, with some utility in music, language, shops, sports, and clubs. Study periods can fill out the day where necessary. The former three utilities should be paid for by students on a "fee for service" basis.
2. Repetition, drill, recitation, memorization, writing and problem solving are essential for every student, almost daily through high school.
However, even better and cheaper is to go to a voucher system.
Sam D. Calaby
Columbia
Player Owners
There seems only one way that both sides in the baseball strike can save face and get what they want.
The baseball players need to become partial baseball owners in a deal similar to an employee stock ownership plan.
Only by allowing the players to share in ownership can this baseball strike be given a higher purpose.
Scott Lawrence
Parkton
Slaves?
According to your Jan. 17 article, Baltimore Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III, "yielding to an outcry from angry tenants," has abandoned a proposal to require those who rent the city's public housing apartments to do community work.
Tenants, such as Anna Warren, who has been such a resident for 35 years, mobilized against the requirement because they felt it made them feel like "slaves" and "second-class citizens" and that "we don't want to be told what we have to do."
As a result, new leases are being drawn that do not have clauses mandating volunteer duties as a condition of living in public housing. Instead, tenants will only be "encouraged" to do so.
Has it ever dawned on anybody that after 35 years in public housing, perhaps Ms. Warren has allowed herself to become a "slave" to the system?
How are taxpayers who lose their jobs and then get promptly dumped from unemployment compensation rolls in just six months supposed to understand this? In no other arena that I'm aware of do non-contributors make the rules. I propose that legislators no longer mandate taxes that subsidize people like Ms. Warren. Instead, simply "encourage" people to volunteer to pay taxes.
Richard S. Trostle Sr.
Towson
Therapists versus Chiropractors
I am writing this letter in response to the Jan. 12 letter written by a chiropractor, in response to the Dec. 26 letter written by a physical therapist.
It should come as no surprise that the recent media attention on back pain would bring to the surface the professional animosity that exists between these two professions.
This kind of reminds me of the old Cold War mentality that used to exist between us and the Russians; we didn't like each other and were told bad things about each other ever since I could remember.
Of course, this has all changed, and we have come to realize that they're just regular people. It's amazing how much chiropractors and physical therapist dislike each other, each accusing the other of performing "techniques" out of their realm of expertise.
This is what's known as a turf battle. However, it's amazing to me how much of this animosity exists also because of ignorance.
Many physical therapists and chiropractors have never observed each other in action or discussed philosophy of treatment with each other. Yet all this professional mudslinging exists.
I have been a physical therapist for 15 years now, and the number one problem that I have treated is neck and lower back pain. I'd like to think that I have been successful.
What I have learned in my years of practice is that there are good, caring clinicians that effectively treat backs and those that are not so caring and without the expertise, be they chiropractors or physical therapists.
Sure, there are differences in our philosophical approaches, but there are also similarities.
I have sat down and discussed treatment philosophy with chiropractors, and we agreed to disagree on some points but also agreed on many things and actually found out that we can co-exist without attacking each other's practice.
I would like to clear up some misconceptions:
1. Regarding education, I would say that chiropractors and physical therapists both attend a rigorous concentrated curriculum. I myself do not know many PTs that have had only four years of education. The PT program at University of Maryland is currently a six-year program.
2. Physical therapists and chiropractors both utilize manual therapy. Both perform manipulation/mobilization to the spine but
utilize different techniques to achieve their goal.
3. I would not have the professional arrogance to say that physical therapists are the best-trained health professionals to evaluate musculoskeletal disorders. I would say that our training enables us to be proficient in this area and among the best trained health professionals in this area.
4. I would not argue the fact that many potentially serious and even life-threatening pathologies may cause back pain, and specific medical testing may need to be performed to rule these out.
However, the appropriate health professional to do this is a medical doctor, such as an internist whose training is far superior to either the chiropractor or the physical therapist.
A thorough clinical evaluation by either a chiropractor or physical therapist is often valuable in leading to these tests when a musculoskeletal cause of the patient's pain cannot be found.
I hope this clears up any misconceptions about our professions and doesn't lead to any further "profession bashing." Let's play nice!
Walter Mady
Ellicott City
TTC