OpiniOn

Opinion THE WOODSTOCK INDEPENDENT Woodstock, IL • 1987

As the graph to the right indicates, things are getting better regarding COVID-19 cases in Illinois.

But don’t be fooled. We still have a long, long way to go before anything resembling normal returns.

Health officials are still reporting new infections and more deaths from the coronavirus every week.

We are still living with a pandemic, and we will be for months, maybe longer.

Until nearly everyone who wants to be vaccinated against the virus has been. Until we know how the variants of the disease will spread among the population. Until we know how effective the vaccine can be against those variants.

Literally everyone has been harmed by COVID-19. Everyone – beyond the nearly 24,000 people in McHenry County who have suffered physically from the illness, and as the death total approaches 300. That’s about one of every 1,000 residents of this county in just 11 months. That harm can be quantified.

Less obvious are the long-term social and emotional effects of the disease, especially on children.

In its plan – short and long term – to address pandemic-aggravated learning gaps, Woodstock School District 200 is focusing on social-emotional needs of students along with improvement of their skills. Until Feb. 1, D-200 had used remote learning almost exclusively this school year because of the risk COVID-19 posed.

While helping all children reach grade-level skills in math and reading is critical, said Kevin Lyons, D-200’s communications director, “so is making sure students are able to cope through some difficult times. That’s why our intervention strategies are designed for both academic and social-emotional needs.”

Before enacting a hybrid learning approach that allowed students back into the schools, the D-200 Board of Education heard from many parents about the effects of social isolation

GRAPH BY JERRY NOWICKI, CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS

from remote learning on their children’s mental health.

In another effort to address that problem, D-200 is sponsoring a virtual series of speakers to help parents help their children. Unfortunately, parents who could benefit most tend not to involve themselves in such programs. Only about three dozen people were on last week’s first one via Zoom. (The program is now on the D-200 website, woodstockschools.org.)

In his 90-minute presentation, Dr. Ken Ginsburg, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine, offered advice in promoting resilience in children who are experiencing these difficult times.

Much of it was Parenting 101: Model the behaviors you want children to develop, be the kind of parent your kids want to talk to, and understand the challenges posed by uncertainty in the lives of kids.

“An adolescent’s job is to stretch your limits,” Ginsburg cautioned those parents in the audience.

His was a message everyone needs to hear, given that “it takes a village. ...”

In that regard, we all can help.

“The problem with winter sports is that – follow me closely here – they generally take place in the winter.” – Dave Barry

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” – Carl Reiner

“Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.” – Earl Wilson

On Feb. 2, I dressed in multiple layers and headed to the Woodstock Square, arriving about 6:30 a.m. to find a prime piece of sidewalk where I could shiver and watch a furry meteorologist see – or not see – his shadow shortly after 7. Woodstock Willie, our town’s version of a certain Pennsylvania groundhog, was reluctantly removed from an artificial tree stump by his handler, and then Brian Sager – for one final time as mayor – interpreted Willie’s “Groundhogese,” to announce that Willie had NOT seen his shadow. The news, which meant we’d see an early spring instead of six more weeks of winter, was greeted with much Paul Lockwood joy by the hun- A Musing dreds of masked attendees who’d assembled on a very cold Tuesday morning to listen to Die Musikmeisters perform “Pennsylvania Polka” and other joyous tunes and to celebrate “Groundhog Day,” both the holiday and the film. Believing in Willie’s accuracy, I waited patiently in line to pose for a photo with this tiny oncea-year prognosticator/celebrity in our midst.

But did Willie lie to us?

As of the time I’m writing this column – the night of Feb. 16 – we’ve had a dozen consecutive days with high temperatures below freezing. Well below freezing. The only good news is that by the time you’re reading this column, things may have turned around; weather.com is predicting highs in the 30s from this past Sunday through the beginning of March. More relatively good news: while Midway Airport received almost 18 inches of snow between Valentine’s Day and Feb. 16, Woodstock got only 2.5 inches.

Ask anyone in the Midwest what their favorite season of the year is and you’ll get a variety of answers. But ask for their least favorite season and the vast majority, myself included, will say winter. The National Spelling Bee participant inside of me knows it’s a six-letter word, but the realist inside of me, even though I don’t swear much, believes it’s the four-letter word that often inspires many other four-letter words.

Prior to the pandemic, disembarking from a Metra train to find your car that was parked all day has vanished under ice or snow? Why, I swear … that I felt like swearing. Feeling subzero wind chills against your eyes as you pushed your grocery cart to the other end of the lot because you couldn’t find a closer spot? Not something my face … liked to face. Searching for your morning newspaper in your drifting snowcovered driveway, hoping a snowplow hasn’t pushed it up the street? That’s the kind of coverage I never want … when my bathrobe and pajamas are

Perseverance, NASA’s newest Mars rover, landed on the Red Planet!

Given all of the cancellations and postponements of key events in so many of our lives the past year due to COVID-19, it was a joy and a relief to witness something so significant happening as planned. I watched the goings on all Thursday afternoon on NASA’s YouTube channel.

Perseverance appeared to perform perfectly, firing when it needed to fire and shedding what it needed to shed. Its parachute opened on cue, and its crane lowered what has been described as humanity’s most sophisticated rover on a flat spot in Jezero crater about 3 p.m.

Within minutes of landing, Perseverance began sending colored photos back to mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, Calif. All who were watching the coverage saw the photos at the same time as the teams of engineers and scientists in mission control.

There’s plenty of information about Perseverance on the internet: n NASA sponsored a naming contest, and Alex Mather, a Virginia seventh-grader, submitted the winner – Perseverance. There was plenty of competition – 28,000 names were submitted. n Percy, as the 2,260-pound rover is dubbed, traveled 293 million miles from launch July 30 to Jezero crater, and there’s more traveling ahead, exploring the Mars landscape. n The equipment for Mars 2020, as the entire mission is called, includes more than 20 cameras – the most ever flown on a deep space mission, so we can look forward to many more photos and videos. Also onboard are all kinds of sensors and instruments as well as what’s needed to collect rock cores and soil samples that will eventually be brought back to earth for study.

That was a good start for me, but I wanted to know more, so I sent an email to my high school classmate Neil Mottinger, who had a part in the Mars 2020 Project.

Neil grew up on a farm near Oswego. He was interested in space and astronomy as a kid, and even built his own telescope while in high school.

His dream of being part of what was and would be happening at JPL became a reality less than two years after he graduated from the University of Illinois. And he’s been there ever since – 53 years. Obviously, he loves what he’s doing.

As we talked via Zoom Saturday about the success of the mission, Neil explained that he was on Percy’s navigation team. “We were responsible for determining the trajectory the rover was actually on after launch and the design maneuvers to bring it back on course if its predicted position at Mars arrival would fail to meet certain accuracy requirements.”

He had been working from home since March 6 as had at least half of the hundreds of people working on the project. We chatted briefly about the logistics of communicating and the challenges if anyone lost power or internet connectivity.

I asked Neil how he celebrated the landing. “I never get terribly excited,” he said, adding that he had been on the “graveyard shift” – 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. – for the four days leading up to the landing. “We were providing support round the clock.”

He gave me an easy-to-understand description of how the mission would benefit future space exploration. “If people are going to go Mars, we need to know if oxygen can be manufactured from what’s in the Mars atmosphere,” he said. “And people will want to come home. We can’t take enough fuel for a round trip. So, can we manufacture rocket fuel from what’s there?”

What fascinated me most was what Neil said about the conveniently planned landing time – about 3 p.m. CST on Feb. 18. “The arrival time was fixed when we launched on July 30,” he said. “The mission designers wanted to land at a certain time at a certain location.” And Neil and his teammates helped make that happen.

Neil is truly a space evangelist. He’s a member of JPL’s speakers bureau and has his own Space Enthusiasts email group. I plan to continue following Perseverance updates on the internet and will read Neil’s Space Enthusiast emails. If you’d like to receive his emails, too, email me at c.wormley@ thewoodstockindependent.com.

Cheryl Wormley Declarations

Cheryl Wormley is publisher of The Woodstock Independent. Her email address is c.wormley@thewoodstockindependent.com.

Continued from Previous page

barely providing any coverage.

Is this what Shakespeare meant about the winter of our discontent? Not that I mean to totally dis winter, but I’m definitely not content with it.

When my wife and I moved back to Illinois in the fall of 1997 after living eight years in Florida, many people asked me why I’d want to leave a state where cold weather is a rarity. I used to joke that you can always put on more layers of clothing in the winter up here, but you can take off only so many layers in the summer in the Sunshine State before you run the risk of harassment. That’s what I used to jokingly say. But when I’m in our “fourseason room” watching TV, I would like to be a couch potato all four seasons without needing a blanket, a sweatshirt, and an electric fireplace.

At least when I was a kid, we looked forward to the occasional snow day. But with the coronavirus making remote learning less, well, remote of a possibility, students can get buried under the snow AND buried under with schoolwork.

Spring can’t get here soon enough as far as I’m concerned. The only thing I’m more eager for is the COVID vaccine. Maybe if I don’t see my own shadow, I’ll be able to inject more than just humor into this season that leaves me cold. It’s worth a shot.

Paul Lockwood has been an enthusiastic singer, constant punster, frequent local theater actor, active Grace Lutheran Church and Toastmasters member, occasional theater reviewer, and past president of TownSquare Players. A senior sales operations specialist for Vitality Group USA, Paul has lived in Woodstock for 20 years with his wife, Diane.

We would like to add to the list of people who were thanked in the Christmas House ad [The Independent, Feb. 17]. Isabel Baker, founding director of The Book Vine for Children in McHenry, donated not only several hundred books but also a substantial amount of money toward the purchase of additional books for children.

We would also like to thank the staff of the Woodstock Public Library for distributing the books. Without their help, we could not have gotten the books into children’s hands.

$75 in Woodstock, Bull Valley and Wonder Lake. $77 in McHenry County. $82 for snowbirds and $90 outside McHenry County.

We strive for accuracy. To suggest corrections or clarifications, email news@ thewoodstockindependent.com.

Cheryl Wormley

c.wormley@thewoodstockindependent.com

Larry Lough

larry@thewoodstockindependent.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sandy Kucharski

sandy@thewoodstockindependent.com

Ken Farver

ken@thewoodstockindependent.com GRAPHIC DESIGNER Dianne Mitchell

dianne@thewoodstockindependent.com ADVERTISING MANAGER Jen Wilson

jen@thewoodstockindependent.com

Katy O’Brien

katy@thewoodstockindependent.com ADMINISTRATION/SUBSCRIPTIONS Rebecca McDaniel

subs@thewoodstockindependent.com

Paul Lockwood, Lisa Haderlein, Dan Chamness, Patricia Kraft, Jeff Cook, Cynthia Kanner, Nancy Shevel

Vicky Long, Margie Paffrath, Alex Vucha

Tricia Carzoli, Janet Dovidio, Susan W. Murray, Megan Ivers, Lydia LaGue

Jim Mansfield, Luke Goins

Don Humbertson

Press releases and photos

pr@thewoodstockindependent.com

news@thewoodstockindependent.com

NOON THURSDAY Display advertising

ads@thewoodstockindependent.com

NOON FRIDAY Legal notices

subs@thewoodstockindependent.com Classified Ads

classifieds@thewoodstockindependent.com