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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2020 - JANUARY 6, 2021
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VOL. 8, NO. 53
2020: A TUMULTUOUS AND DEFINING YEAR Terry MILLER tmiller@beaconmedianews.com
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020 was quite a year — truly an understatement, if ever there was one. What started out as clearly focused as the year’s digits imply, rapidly unfolded to be extremely foggy, out of focus and horrendous beyond our wildest imagination. Coronavirus crept upon our planet rapidly early in the year but, regrettably, the now lame-duck administration did very little initially to acknowledge the potential devastation this outbreak would ultimately produce both at home and globally. Staggering in numbers and impact on all our lives, COVID-19 was determined to permeate every aspect of our lives, essentially making us prisoners in our own homes. Children were forced to learn new skills and participate in “distance learning,” which was indeed a challenge for educators too. Teachers organized car parades to show their affection for the pupils unable to attend in-person classes. Supplies were rationed — not as bad as in World War II but nonetheless, hell hath no fury like a city without toilet paper. Supermarket shelves were suddenly void of essentials in the spring, causing long lines, altered hours and the like. Most of us have grown accustomed to wearing face masks outside, carrying hand sanitizer everywhere we go and maintaining
6 feet of distance from others. We adopted new words and phrases into our daily lexicon like “social distancing,” “quarantine,” “epidemiologists,” “asymptomatic,” “antibody,” and Merriam-Webster’s 2020 Word of the Year “pandemic.” In between all this, there were multiple protests and some riots in response to the police killing of George Floyd in May, paradoxically over an alleged passing of a counterfeit $20 bill at a Minneapolis, Minn. store. A white police officer named Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck, for a period initially reported to be 8 minutes and 46 seconds, killing him. Large and small cities around the world exploded with intense feelings of frustration, heartbreak, anger and indignation over police violence and racism. In some major cities, peaceful protests turned violent and some saw clashes between protestors and white supremacist groups. Meanwhile, a rather important election was unfolding in a country more divided than ever before. Politicians spent a fortune to tell you their plans for the future, conspiracy theories abounded (at times pushed by politicians themselves), and many added fuel to the already rapidly spreading and divisive fire by saying your vote would not count if you mailed it in. Baseless voter fraud claims were echoed by rightwing media — so much so that protests erupted outside ballot counting locations —
and the Trump campaign filed countless lawsuits in a fruitless attempt to overturn the election that saw former Vice President Joe Biden win the election with 306 electoral votes. Kamala Harris, President-elect Biden’s runningmate, became the first Black woman vice president in the history of the nation. The summer was the hottest on record in the Northern Hemisphere which led to fires across the West. California saw fires that destroyed millions of acres of wildland and structures galore. Locally, the Bobcat Fire was one of the biggest in the San Gabriel Valley’s history. As of Dec. 28, 9,639 fires have burned 4,177,856 acres, more than 4% of the state's roughly 100 million acres of land, making 2020 the largest wildfire season recorded in California's modern history (according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.) A staggering and devastating number of lives lost due to the coronavirus, civil unrest, a presidential election, jobs and homes lost, and now a suspected Russian hacking into the U.S. government made 2020 feel like the worst of times. But it wasn’t all bad. Among the pain we saw the resiliency of the human spirit in the faces of health care workers pulling 16-hour shifts, in the smiles of teachers cheering on graduates in family cars, in the generosity of volunteers at food pantries, in the voices of protestors
In April, teachers from area schools held car parades letting their students know they are loved after all schools were shut down for in person learning due to the coronavirus. | Photo by Terry Miller / Beacon Media News
calling and working for a better tomorrow, in eyes of everyday people wearing face masks to protect one another.
Thank goodness there is light at the end of this extremely long tunnel. The two makers of a COVID-19 vaccine have rolled out
millions of doses. The jabs (vaccinations) have started. Perhaps, soon, we may be able to form a new and better “normal.”