Commentary

I am deeply disappointed in the Carroll County school board’s reaction to the issue of masking in our schools. Schools in Florida recently opened without requiring masks and promptly had to quarantine thousands of students due to COVID-19 exposures. How can we keep it from happening here? Require everyone inside the schools to wear masks. Our county health officer Ed Singer gave an informative presentation to the school board on Aug. 11 detailing the pros and cons of different masking situations.

On Saturday, citizens from Anne Arundel County will be joining tens of thousands of people in the Nation’s Capitol in observance of the anniversary of 1963 March on Washington. It was at that rally for jobs, freedom and justice more than a half-century ago that the late Congressman John Lewis called on his nation to form “a more perfect union.” Now, attorney Daryl Jones, a former Anne Arundel County councilman and chair of the national Transformative Justice Coalition is spearheading an effort to mobilize, organize and energize citizens from the county to attend.

CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward is a very good reporter, and there are other good ones risking their lives to take us to dangerous locations in Afghanistan, Africa, Haiti and wherever trouble is making news. Ward was showing her anger. Her reporter’s eyes were alternately flashing and rolling, showing obvious disgust with the answer she was getting from John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman official trying to answer press questions about the chaos in Afghanistan.

Citing a “historical decline in the living resources of the Chesapeake Bay” bay state governors joined by the mayor of Washington, D.C. and the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed an agreement solemnly committing to restoration. This first Bay Agreement of Dec. 9, 1983, set the stage for the formal EPA Bay Program, which was initially supported and funded by President Reagan.