Editor’s note: This poem is from a 100-year-old World War II veteran and was submitted by her daughter, Madeline McClure of Dallas.
The cynic in February
Why trust a month of varying days. Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? A month that trips the tongue, bewilders groundhogs, offers a pale diluted sun, to mock our chill.
Beneath fresh layers of snow, lies treacherous ice. Beware that February sky, blue and serene as a nursery. Storm clouds threaten, our springtime fantasies.
Don’t believe lovers, who bring valentines. Red satin can hide a cardboard heart, sweet phrases, like soft-centered chocolates, cloy, and lacy paper promises, may blow away in March.
Kathleen Henderson DuHaime, Princeton, N.J.
Better meters can help
Re: “Angry about your gas bill? Here’s a fix,” by Dave Lieber, Sunday Metro column.
Thanks again to Lieber and The Dallas Morning News for helping inform the public on the myriad nuances regarding energy utilities in Texas. Please allow me to put a finer point on this column. I am the retired energy manager for the city of Fort Worth. One of my responsibilities was to address complaints from the city’s local energy utility customers.
Atmos customer complaints were often received around this time of year, most regarding unusually high bills. These were sometimes associated with how Texas law requires natural gas meter reads only twice per year. Current best practice for energy and water utilities is to employ advanced-metering Infrastructure. Within the past decade, readers may remember Oncor’s deployment of AMI “Smart Meters.” Our city’s water utility has recently deployed AMI.
AMI helps utilities better manage their business, providing important system and customer data that results in more accurate and timely billing. Concerned Atmos customers should consider inquiring about conversion of their meters to AMI. Although there are limitations to their installation; AMI implementation has helped resolve several Atmos customer complaints in Fort Worth.
Samuel C. Steele, Fort Worth
SPCA, what’s your mission?
Re: “No justice for abused animals,” by Sharon Grigsby, Sunday Metro column.
SPCA is the abbreviation for Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. How can the SPCA’s management make the decision to “withdraw”? That is, if you don’t pay us, we won’t help investigate, seize, provide forensics and prosecute animal abuse.
I was a volunteer animal-abuse investigator with the Humane Society of Dallas County assisting the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department in the 1970s and was one of the first to successfully provide testimony for a cruelty seizure. I also was on the SPCA board in the ’70s. I’ve been there.
Refusing to assist the Dallas Police Department reflects badly on the organization and on the causes it promotes. Animal abuse is a horrendous, often hidden part of our society.
Do the job, SPCA. It’s about the animals who cannot speak for themselves, not about the money. Use that extra $1.8 million you had after expenses in 2021 to continue being a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Kris Walden, Decatur
How did we get here?
Re: “As shootings pile up, are we now ‘immune’? — 6 mass killings already in 2023 leave many feeling despondent,” Monday news story.
I am a gun owner with a permit to carry, which I obtained when we had sensible laws. It is staggering to me that we allow any criminal, mentally ill or simply unqualified person to carry firearms.
Automobiles are deadly weapons so we require registration, training and regulation of automobiles. Want to carry a firearm? No problem. Just show up with money and a pulse. It is so crazy that I can’t comprehend it.
Where guns are being prohibited, such as the United Kingdom, guns are used in homicides 4% of the time compared to 79% of the time in the U.S.
Gov. Greg Abbott wants to preserve the unborn by taking rights away from women while those who are born face the possibility of being killed by a gun. The Second Amendment, which I support, only says that we have the right to bear arms, nothing more.
We need to return to commonsense gun laws and keep dangerous guns out of the hands of children and criminals. We have already shown that the current approach has failed miserably. As the saying goes, stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Either life matters or it doesn’t.
William Burton Fears, DeSoto
Do we still need these?
I just received my voter registration certificate like I have since forever, and now I’m wondering why? They have no useful purpose. Back in the day, that was all you needed to vote. Now voters don’t need this document to cast a ballot.
It’s time to stop spending money on going through the motions, and send this particular antique to the sunset commission and let it die an ignoble death.
I’m wondering if I’m missing something. Is there a purpose for voter registration certificates anymore?
Glenn Kelly, Cedar Park
Wasn’t the airport ready for this?
Tuesday and Wednesday weather at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport is resulting in many flight cancellations. Why? North Texas has had about two inches of freezing precipitation. But then you remember, did not DFW Airport buy over 20 snow plows at $900,000 each and build a $12 million shed to house them?
So I ask, if we spent about $30 million to manage winter weather, why are DFW Airport operations so negatively impacted? Was it the wrong type of precipitation or did snow plows not work, or both?
M. A. Conroy, Grapevine
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