It must be the barometric pressure that is affecting me again today. My sorry butt has been dragging behind me since getting out of bed this morning. The sky is grey, it is threatening to rain, but it isn’t raining, but it did drizzle a bit. Whatever it is, by noon I was asleep on the couch pretending to read. One would think I got out of bed by six in the morning, but it wasn’t until 8:30 that it finally happened. Three and a half hours later I’m sleeping like I had shoveled a truck load of coal yesterday.
Actually, last evening I spent a lovely hour on the phone with a young lady from our Lions club. She had just given notice that she and her son were leaving the club, and I had to know why. I found out more than I needed to know to answer my question. It wasn’t because of our failing as a club. Her son just turned twenty-four, and is having acute medical problems which was caused by his birth. He was born three months early and had a very rough time making it into this life. The medical effect was to put him on a drug that would take its toll on his kidneys at a later time in life. It is now that time. That puts him at great risk with the virus too. His choice was to accept life over a service club that puts him at risk of death with every activity he helps. We need direct contact with people in order to serve them. In fact, as Past President of the club I am going wild trying to find a way that we can serve without direct contact.
Because this is a pandemic, every Lions club in the world is affected the same way. What do we do? How do we do it? Those are the questions we wrestle with. Do we wait until the world is rock solid secure that COVID-19 will not affect us anymore? That might be twenty years from now.
Many clubs are having virtual fund raising activities. One in particular struck me as being novel, i.e. a virtual Five K run. No, you don’t imagine running five kilometers, you actually run the distance and report your time to the race officials online. They match your time against all the participants and award the prize to the fastest runner. It isn’t just the same as having a hundred runners show up at one place, register, and who then take off with the gun and fifteen minutes later show up again sweaty and pooped. It just isn’t the same, but people might just take the bait because it is different. The trick is to have a worthy cause to be raising money for.
This year, I will serve as our Club Service Chair which means I will have to stimulate people to find projects to work on. Most times we wait for the projects to come to us, but that leaves huge gaps between service. With lots of members who join to “give back” we need to offer them many opportunities to fulfill their needs. It will be my game to root out the opportunities. COVID has ruined several of our popular events in the Village. To date the Blue Grass Festival is cancelled, the Art on the Green is cancelled, Thursday night car shows are cancelled, and on and on. All of these events have deferred til next year. But, what if next year COVID-19 is still here in force? Do we go back into hiding, or do we begin taking chances with catching the damn bug and fighting back? My guess is that we will not hunker down again, but will fight it off.
Watching the country burn during this rash of riots caused by one man’s brutality against another’s will no doubt cause a spike in COVID. None of the rioters have paid much attention to social distancing, and wearing masks. At this moment I would not want to be in President Trump’s position. He upset the country by closing down and making us all hurt, and now he has to wave a big stick at us to end rioting.
To me the biggest joke is the organizers who really thought they could get away with storming the White House, and are now shouting that Trump is violating their civil rights. If I were president I would have had the entire riot force shot, and their bodies piled on the lawn in front of the White House while I would have stood on the pile brandishing my AK 47 in one hand and the American Flag in the other. That is only one of the many reasons I am not a politician.
Filed under: Conservative, Election, family, Government, politics | Tagged: Covid-19, George Floyd, Lions Club, riots, Service Projects |
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