Scott Swanson
The other day I responded to a report of a fire, the results of which you can see on page 10-11.
It wasn’t routine, and I’m not talking about the explosions that kept me and most of the onlookers well away from the roaring flames.
What was unusual was the onlookers themselves – probably one of the the largest crowds I’ve seen in covering fires for 15 years here at The New Era.
I knew something was different when I found myself edging along Elm Street at 10 mph behind a long line of cars.
When I see billowing plumes of black smoke shooting into the sky, I feel like I need to get there as soon as possible. Apparently, the rest of the town felt that way as well, except that we weren’t moving much faster than a brisk walk.
When I finally pulled up in front of Oak Heights School, people and vehicles were milling about as fire and police officials tried to move hoses in position.
The coronavirus has brought a lot of surprises and abrupt changes to our lives. This was, apparently, one of them: bored people who apparently promptly forgot they were supposed to stay home.
Can’t say I blame them. It’s been an experience, having our lives slowed to a near-halt, and it’s resulted in consequences not all of us might have anticipated. Such as:
– No school. Well, there is school, as noted in a variety of stories in this issue, but it’s a rude introduction for many to what life is like for home-schoolers.
– No school events. It’s amazing, now that we’ve gone nearly a month without kids on campus, to realize how much of our news comes from local schools. Let’s see… no Mr. Husky, no spring plays, no May Week, no concerts, no graduation at Husky Field, no awards presentations (at least public ones), and zero spring sports. More on that one in a second. Those are just high school events we typically cover, in addition to other classroom news and achievements. At the grade schools and junior high, no science fairs, no Outdoor School, no spring plays, no concerts, and no All-School Track Meet.
That’s a lot of newspaper pages.
– No sports. Before COVID-19, I certainly would have attested that we spend a lot of time at The New Era covering sporting events, but I can’t say I’ve ever actually sat down and quantified it – partly because we are always running at high velocity just to stay on top of things, including local sports. As you can read on page 19, the OSAA, which governs most high school extracurricular activities in Oregon, has officially shut those down for the remainder of the school year. This has to be particularly hard on first-year coaches and our choir director, who are trying to build programs.
Wow. Even the “dead” week between Christmas and New Year’s Day doesn’t compare to this shutdown of all athletic events. Free time in the late afternoons? We hardly know what that means.
Of course, sports are important to many of our readers (including myself).
One large area paper, which I often read when I have free time, announced a few weeks ago that it was literally scrapping its sports section because of the shutdown of all athletics – pro, college and high school.
They’re still running sports stories, but those are mostly interviews with coaches and athletes on how they’re spending their free time, how frustrated they are, etc. Or they’re running recap stories, such as one I saw recently, on how each of the different clubs in a professional golfer’s bag have been used to win at least one Master’s. Ahem. Not sure I would have ever thought about doing THAT story when things were normal.
– Obviously, we’re doing lots of stories on how people are stepping up to meet this challenge and helping one another. Since we’re not omniscient and can’t read minds (or every Facebook page), we’re interested in hearing from readers who know of something that might make a good story. That’s always true, but particularly right now. And by the way, if you call and don’t hear back, don’t hesitate to call again. We never ignore a news tip, but we have been known, on rare occasions, to misplace phone numbers and notes in the scurry that never stops in a newspaper office.
It’s going to be interesting to look back and evaluate the various decisions and actions that have put us in this position. But right now, our best course of action is to do all we can to document what’s happening around us.
This is, after all, history.