Letters: Nonessential businesses should do what’s best for the community; COVID-19 pandemic not surprising
Nonessential businesses: Do what’s best for the community
Coronavirus has left us all with moments of anxiety and time to reflect. The questions I’m asking myself are simple: Who is important to me, and who am I important to? I believe the first question is easy. I value life, everyone’s life. Who am I important to — a different feeling comes over me.
Many of us have seen complete ignorance and greed take over, businesses that won’t close to quarantine for fear of losing a sale. The translation to their employees: We do not value you or your families.
I ask that this town that has learned to dance with the world not shop at nonessential businesses that refuse to care about what’s best for the community. We need to stand for all those who are vulnerable.
This is my journey to understanding worth.
Cyber meeting is the wrong place for fifth grade vote
The next Philipsburg school board meeting is a voting meeting on whether fifth grade is moved down to elementary. This is also the one and only opportunity the public gets to voice their opinion before the board votes.
The board has decided to make this a cyber meeting in lieu of the health crisis. I have a deep-seated concern with this for several reasons. First, is the board allowed to hold this meeting with the rest of the district closed and the “less than 10” at a gathering rule? If so, when were they going to inform the public and give proper instructions on how to attend? They create automated phone calls for hoagie sales but yet fail to create a notification for this more monumental change. Second, I personally sat in on the last school board meeting where Dr. Paladina stated that should school close, the district would not be able to cyber school due to the lack of broadband capabilities in many of our districts’ homes. If true, Dr. Paladina, how is it fair to hold a cyber board meeting that weighs so heavily on our children’s academia if most parents wouldn’t be able to digitally attend?
Regardless of what side of the argument you are on, ALL deserve a fair chance to voice their opinion on the future of our children’s education. I encourage each to reach out to your school board representative and/or Pennsylvania School Board Association 506-2450. Let’s make this an equal opportunity meeting.
COVID-19 pandemic not surprising
I am alarmed but not surprised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Global human population has increased more than threefold since I was born in 1950, to almost 7.8 billion people today. We have been using resources far beyond the carrying capacity of our planet for too long.
I wasn’t around when the Spanish flu killed millions in 1918, but as an agronomist I am reminded of the 1970 Southern Corn Leaf Blight, which ravaged almost 85 percent of the maize crop in the USA that summer. The fungus withered corn plants and resulted in malformed or rotted cobs that were completely covered in a grayish powder. Wall-to-wall Homo sapiens has proved itself as vulnerable to disease as widespread monoculture of corn.
Habitat destruction has hastened our tragedy. Hundreds of deadly microbes like the novel coronavirus have come into contact with our species in my lifetime as a result (think HIV, Ebola, ad nauseam). This outbreak may have been spread because of consumption of pangolins (scaly anteaters). Please don’t blame the Chinese, gay marriage or endangered species, though. We need to get our birthrate under control or nature, red in tooth and claw, will do so for us.