This Thanksgiving I am, despite the very odd year we have all had, thankful. I'm still here. I have two daughters who came into my life in a non-traditional way, and we're still a family, though we are half a country apart today. Next year for sure. Still, I cannot help but think of the many chairs at the Thanksgiving table that are empty today, some of them permanently.
Many of our readers have been following the live streams of the Menomonie School Board meetings. We've been providing this live stream because we think that schools are important to the public, and because the school board is one of the very few government entities that has been meeting in person rather than virtually since the pandemic started.
It has been quite a while since I last wrote a community update. But life has been crazy here, and something else always gets in the way. Today I am fixing this.
We're trying out another community engagement experiment. WisCommunity is partnering with Polco to do polls of the local community. At the moment we're interested in how you feel about sending your kids back to school this fall, and how you think that will happen.
Since lately the world seems to have become crazier than normal and I have been caught up in working a lot more than normal, I thought it was time to take a deep breath and let you know what's up with us, and the news, and the future.
So it's like this. It's Friday night and I've spent part of the afternoon coping with the fact that our web provider fell off of the internet intermittently for a lot of the afternoon. And I'm still getting used to the idea that the big pot of money I was hoping for from Facebook seems not to have fallen into the company checking account.
I know we're all feeling a little on-edge. On a personal note I have been running as fast as I can for the past week and still feel incredibly behind. There are so many things to do, and life refuses to slow down. And as things stand now I am more and more just hunkering down in the house and trying to do everything from here. I have the disturbing feeling that the smattering of life video from meetings yesterday will be the last outside reporting gig for a while.
I know for a lot of us the days seem incredibly long at the moment. We're all a little worried, we're all a little stressed, and the landscape of life has become unfamiliar. As of today we have no restaurants and bars (other than carry-out). Many of the touchstones of our lives are closed or closing. Personally it's hard for me to accept that the libraries and schools are closed for the duration.
It's Valentine's Day - for many of you that means romance, but for people who love Old Time Radio, it's also Jack Benny's birthday. In that spirit, I'd like to share a Valentine's Day Jack Benny Program, featuring Jack's continual efforts to get a date, some WWII references, and the inimitable vocal stylings of Rochester Van Jones. And as always, Jack is trying to get people to see one of his movies - this time it's Charlie's Aunt.
