The Grinch, 2020 both ‘stink, stank, stunk’

There’s a line from the song, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch,” which pretty well sums up the year that was 2020.

“You stink, stank, stunk!”

Unless you, a close relative or a close friend had a new baby in 2020 or you hit the Powerball big time, then chances are you HATED 2020.

The vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats can all agree that 2020 really sucked! (Who said there is no bi-partisan agreement anymore…LOL.)

While 2020 and conversely COVID-19 have been awful, there were a handful of things from this year that should probably stick around once 2020 and COVID-19 are gone.

In-person, expanded early voting is a good example of this.

Everyone that I talked to loved it. It resulted in large numbers of people going to vote.

Kentucky already has in-person, early absentee voting for people, who won’t be in town or can’t get to the polls on Election Day. The infrastructure is already in place for this in all 120 counties.

Let people go vote in-person without excuse starting three weeks before Election Day.

In 2020, high school graduates didn’t get to have a traditional graduation in most cases, but something that happened instead were celebration parades for graduates.

Seniors rode in vehicles – usually cars, trucks or SUVs, and in the case of one Whitley County High School senior a tractor – while people lined the parade route yelling, waving, and holding up signs supporting seniors. These were much cooler than anything they had when I graduated high school. (It has been a while, but yes, I can remember back that far…LOL).

COVID-19 caused many government agencies to use Zoom, Facebook Live, and other platforms in order to hold their meeting, and broadcast over the Internet so that the public could see.

All of these agencies should continue to record the meetings and broadcast them for the public to see. It increases governmental accountability and transparency.

It also somewhat helps protect government agencies from wild hair conspiracy theories. If people claim something was said at a meeting that wasn’t, then government officials can simply tell people to watch the meeting online and decide for themselves what was said or done.

On the flip side, COVID-19 has also caused the accelerated permanent decline of a few things that won’t be missed by many.

Under the heading of probably gone forever are the six-month old magazines in the waiting room at your doctor’s office, and the waiting rooms at doctor’s offices and dentist offices too for that matter. Now you check in by phone when you arrive in the parking lot, the receptionist calls you back on your cellphone when the doctor is ready to see you, and then you go inside.

Also, under the heading of largely gone forever, are many in-person business type meetings. Technology was probably going to render this a thing of the past eventually, but COVID-19 has accelerated the use of this technology.

Let’s face it. This going to save a lot of businesses a lot of money and save a lot of time for many of their employees.

Before I conclude this column, let me offer a brief note of explanation on something regarding our year-in-review for 2020.

Since COVID-19 changed pretty much everything in 2020, we decided it would be appropriate to give COVID-19 its own list of top stories for 2020, which will appear on the front page of this week’s edition of the News Journal.

Next week, we will be running a separate story on the top 10 other stories from 2020, which weren’t COVID-19 related. As hard as it might be to fathom some days, there was other news in 2020 besides COVID-19. Most notably this included the third highest flood in Williamsburg history and a historic court battle between London and Corbin over the future of the Exit 29 interchange.

For more on this, see next week’s edition of the News Journal.