My Word

February is “I Love To Read Month” – unless you are “Henry.”

Henry can’t read.

He’s in the fourth grade and can’t read. Actually he can read, but he reads on the first-grade/sixth-month level. Henry desperately needs catch-up growth in reading.

A catch-up kindergarten curriculum did not adequately focus on letter recognition, phonemic awareness, phonics and vocabulary development. That robbed him of valuable literacy learning time every year since kindergarten. Neither Henry nor his parents know that.

The aging athlete is a pitiful thing in America, especially when their glory days are more a matter of our own conjecture than any pen-and-ink record of accomplishment. Yes, I am guilty, and so what? I was a better-than-average high school baseball player and a terribly reluctant and, therefore, less-than-average high school football player. But since I have qualified for the Senior Discount at Burger King, I have tried to maintain some semblance of athleticism.

On Jan. 29, the state announced an $86 million cut in child-care assistance for low-income working parents. Also included in the cuts are subsidies to relatives raising abused or neglected children. 

That’s quite a statement for a governor who hung his hat on a platform of the importance of early childhood education, created a statewide Early Childhood Advisory Council and a Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, none of which have made any comment on the impending collapse of the system that houses most of our children under the age of 5 on any given day.

What I have to say about President Barack Obama’s “gun grab” is lengthy but necessary in order to give a proper historical approach and clear up the most recent root cause or the origin of his mindset.

This is not a new idea or effort that has just occurred to Mr. Obama, he and others of his persuasion have labored from time to time toward this end. The horrible event at Newtown, Conn., was not the trigger, but it is just the opportunity to make inroads toward the goal to remove guns and repeal (in some form) the Second Amendment to our Constitution.