While driving past an empty playground the other day, I saw a parent walking outside the fence with two small children and reflected on the waste of resources. I immediately thought how a neighborhood “Guardian Angels” - type organizations could be deputized by the city to allow sequential access to parks — that is, one family in the playground at a time.
The city could allow a mix of time slots, with some periods for scheduled visits and some periods first-come, first-served.
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Meantime, kids could play — separately — in adjoining park land while grownups chat from socially safe distances, with friendly “angels” monitoring.
Along the lakefront, our city-approved “angels” could approach violators playing basketball or soccer with handouts of anti-contact sport rules, and admonish them that they are going to spoil it for everybody if they force the mayor to close the lakefront again.
Banning the lakefront is a vast waste of a resource, with half the city going wacko with cabin fever. Getting out and around is essential. Man and woman live not by bread alone.
This situation is going to go on for a long time. The virus could well spread like wildfire any time people gather closely together, until a vaccine is available and/or infections induce herd immunity. This may take a year.
The only way we can navigate this era and keep our sanity is to work out how to use every bit of safe and sane, not-staying-home possibilities we can think of.
Denis Drew, West Rogers Park
Joggers, put on a mask
The worst for me are the joggers, 90-95% of whom run around without a face mask. Maybe they don’t think they might be infected because they have no symptoms, and since younger people think the coronavirus doesn’t affect them, they don’t care. But they can infect others.
Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot constantly give us information about wearing face masks. Responsible citizens hear and do that, but who finally makes it clear to joggers what they are doing and what might be the result of it someday if they continue to be so irresponsible?
Bernhard K Schmitz, South Loop
Good riddance to horse-drawn carriages
Kudos to City Council for relegating the cruel horse-drawn carriage industry to the dustbin of history.
Even the most stringent regulations cannot prevent the inherent cruelty of forcing horses to haul heavy loads day in and day out. On city streets, horses breathe in searing exhaust, plod through scorching heat and freezing cold, and dodge cars, taxis, buses and trucks. They have no quality of life at all.
Horses are herd animals, who naturally associate with large numbers of other horses, graze in meadows, trot great distances, play and court. They have needs, wants and interests that are entirely independent from what humans ask and expect from them.
For the beleaguered horses, January 1 can’t come soon enough.
Jennifer O’Connor, senior writer, PETA Foundation
Trump’s disinfectant sarcasm
President Trump’s explanation about why he made the dangerous suggestion that disinfectants might be injected or ingested as a way to fight COVID-19 could provide an ideal opening for reporters to keep his feet to the fire at any future press briefing.
By insisting, despite his serious demeanor at the time, that he was just being sarcastic, the next time he makes a similarly baseless proposal or derogatory remark, reporters will have every right to ask, “Did you really mean that, or were you just being sarcastic?
J.L. Stern, Highland Park
