Good from the bad

If you don’t see that good always comes from bad situations, then we can’t be friends. I see some positive things coming from this “learning” experience. Schools should be able to bury “snow days” forever. They should be a thing of the past. We have the technology and the reach to do short term distance learning at this point. I’m not sure it works for months, but for a day or so in the middle of a long hard winter, it is a doable solution. Hot spot access Wi-Fi units can be issued to those students that don’t have internet at the beginning of a year. Teachers can have a “snow day” curriculum locked and loaded and presto, no more calendar uncertainties for teachers, administrators or most importantly parents and students.

Let’s adopt some policies and make this happen by next school year.

It doesn’t take a health genius to understand the specific cities should have been locked down way before they even bothered with rural areas. Places like New York, Los Angeles and airports like Atlanta should have been shuttered with hard shutdowns from the outset. It is obvious that population density, public transportation and major International travel locations are differentiation factors from rural areas.

I’d like to nudge the local public officials that this may be a blaring siren that their cooperation efforts are rather pedestrian. It’s like “the turkey is burning in the oven” smoke alarm going off, not your run of the mill “battery is going down” in the smoke alarm wail.

The Kansas City metropolitan area, just like areas all over the country, like to tout their cooperative efforts during good times on mundane matters such as regional planning and transportation. They lacked that “cooperation” in dealing with COVID-19. I understand the complexities, but it has been confusing for the public and not effective to see the multiplicity in the plans and directives throughout this ordeal. It needs to be prioritized for the future. Here is a simple goal to try to achieve: Fewer cooks in the kitchen during a pandemic.

I am not sure what you all think, but if we don’t get some sports soon, I’m going to go insane, or more insane. Over the last month or so I’ve spread more mulch and mowed more grass than the average person should do in a lifetime. You’ve done the same, I’ve stood behind you at the essential mulch line. This is stupid. We should be on couches, watching ballgames of no consequence; it’s what makes this a great country.

I’ve been married for like 32 years and my wife and I have done more projects together this spring than the combined prior 30 some years. I’m quite sure she’d like to ram a bag of mulch in my pie hole on most weekends. She just wants to go to TJ Maxx and not buy things she thinks she wants and then go back the next day and do it again. I want her to have the opportunity.

In the slightly altered immortal words of Ronald Reagan, I say “Chairman Xi Jinping, tear down This Pandemic”!

(Guy Speckman can be reached at gspeckman@me.com or spreading mulch in random rooms of his house)