Asheville – Just a bit about a couple of things. First, of late, I’ve started to wonder if we’re on the downhill side of the pandemic as the pandemic doesn’t seem to be the top news item anymore. I don’t know if it is getting better because we have a new president or the pandemic numbers are coming down. Whatever the reason, I’m just glad to see it, and if you couple that with the increasing spring-like weather, we should be having an upturn in people’s moods.
First, let’s look at the numbers from the state. From a month ago, we can see that the number of daily reported cases has been cut in half (see chart 1), and more than 10 million tests have been conducted with current hospitalizations under 1,000.
You can also see that whether by gender, which the government is still reporting as though there are only two – (see ‘gender’ chart) or by age (see ‘age’ chart) or by ethnicity (see ethnicity chart), the numbers are declining. Glad to see it.
Next, the more I read about the goings-on at the Asheville City Council and the Buncombe County Commissioners meetings, the happier I am to be in Madison County. Not that we don’t have our own problems up here, they’re just nowhere near what’s going on in the city and county to our south.
There’s “virtue signaling” going on at the Buncombe County Commissioners’ meeting with a non-discrimination ordinance proposal for the “LGBTQ+” community. My questions for Commissioners Parker Sloan and Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, “Who is being discriminated against? This is just a means of “virtue signaling” a proposed solution where there is no problem.
In Asheville, the city council wants hoteliers to pay for reparations. Why? Because to most Asheville residents, developers of hotels are the evil ones, and no one will care if they are taken to the cleaners? In Asheville, you’d think that hoteliers were singularly responsible for slavery and are being asked to pay back the money, which they made off their slaves.
Reparations are something I’ll never understand, but I guess it’s because of my skin color. I mean, how do you make people who’ve never owned a slave pay money to people who’ve never been slaves?
Last, the craziness going on at the national level. Who would have ever thought Dr. Seuss would go down as racist? The author of “Thing 1 and Thing 2” and “Green Eggs and Ham” is label racist and his books banned from libraries. And since when do we start banning books? Isn’t that something that the Nazis did?
However, as I look back over this list of craziness, I’m reminded of what Dr. Seuss said, “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!” ― Dr. Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. And to quote another wise man, Forest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”