Skip to main content

He Came From Out of Town



It’s eight twenty three on a Sunday morning as I type this, which means that I overslept and have missed my time window for getting the blog out at the time most people are looking to read it. 

Oh well. Here goes, anyway.

My thoughts this morning? The news that Tim Walters, the leader of the Re-open Maryland movement has been diagnosed with COVID 19. No, wait, it’s more than that:

He’s been having symptoms for months.
He has been all over the place with no mask.
He refuses to take part in contact tracing.
He thinks it’s all about him.

Walters said he had long suspected he might have the virus but was surprised by the toll it was taking on him this week. “It was nothing like what I thought,” he said.

He didn’t think. 

You may recall that our own little Re-Open Howard County group brought Walters in to their (unwanted by Main Street) Ellicott City event. His thinking is the kind of thinking they espouse. At this moment it might be useful to read the article about Tim Walters and then call out the names of the locals who have been pushing a reopen narrative.

Why?

It makes a difference how we choose to act in tough situations. And these are people who have been more interested in pushing for personal/financial results than in caring for the well-being of our county. That they did it with a kind of gleefulness in attacking the County Executive and the efforts of County Government makes it even sicker, in my opinion. The sickness of trying to grab political traction when people around you are actually suffering and dying.

Just as the Re-Open Howard folks tried to distance themselves from racist signs at their rally, they may try to do the same with Tim Walters. Don’t let them. He’s their guy. If any of them try to convince you in the future that they have a place in local leadership, well, you know better. When others in Howard County were donating time and money and food for those who were struggling, Re-Open Howard County openly mocked medical science, county government, and community spirit. Right on Main Street.

Who do you want to see in positions of leadership? Those who care for others, or only for themselves? 

 








Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...