Naturally, with all these warnings for people to stay away from large crowds, I spent yesterday at the airport. I was shoving my microphone in the face of passengers who’d just arrived on international flights to ask them how they feel about long lines at Customs.
The lines yesterday were pleasantly short, however. Also, thanks to that enhanced screening, I’m fairly certain none of those folks spewed coronavirus on my microphone. Sure, maybe I shouldn’t have licked the baggage claim, but one of the TV photographers dared me!
Even the City of Grapevine has been telling me to stay home and blog more.
Suggestion: If you have any free-time, journaling is a great way to document the history we are living through. Virtually visit the #GrapevineTX library at https://t.co/U39BsKUAcG for inspiring ideas. pic.twitter.com/zFcTALHSgu
— City of Grapevine TX (@GrapevineTXCity) March 17, 2020
We’re all worried about coronavirus. I’ve been getting emails from a lot of businesses with their coronavirus contingency plans.
I understand why my dentist would want me to feel at ease in his office. But I didn’t realize until I saw it that I needed to know Crate and Barrel’s plan. Also that I had, apparently, once bought something from Crate and Barrel.
I also didn’t know until I saw suspiciously similar emails that Joseph A. Bank and Men’s Wearhouse had merged almost five years ago. Apparently, it hasn’t gone well. I’m no economist, but maybe it’s the three-for-one suit deals.
But you never know what’ll happen in the future.
For instance, when Greg Abbott was a kid, he probably didn’t dream of someday being elected governor so he could reassure his worried constituents there was plenty of toilet paper.
Regardless of your political affiliation, we can all agree one of the jobs of a governor is to put the people at ease. Otherwise a crowd of people might storm the Quilted Northern factory with torches and pitchforks.
So today, the governor activated the Texas National Guard.
Our Founding Fathers really were prescient. Imagine Thomas Jefferson and John Adams sitting under a cherry tree.
“Should we regulate toilet paper?” Jefferson might have asked.
“No, we should leave that decision to the states, for we cannot know at this juncture what the future holds for toilet paper,” Adams replies.
So Abbott had the ability to activate the state’s militia to oversee our greatest resource. This was the first time the Texas National Guard had been activated since Hurricane Harvey.
Two and a half years ago, our militia was rescuing people from flash flooding and taking idiots such as this journalist on helicopter rides to document those rescues.
That may be a good civics lesson for our nation’s youth: The 2nd Amendment may be the “gun rights” amendment, but it also lays out the state’s right to keep a militia… which then can oversee toilet paper shortages (In reality, the Texas National Guard will be doing much more. But for the purposes of this blog, the Guard is overseeing toilet paper).
I’ve been to a couple stores to document this toilet paper situation.
One thing that sticks out: Everyone is buying toilet paper in a panic, but there was plenty of Blue Bell. Now that I’ve had the new Cookie Dough Overload, I have to ask: how has there not been a shortage of that?! It’s got “Overload” right in the title! Why aren’t we running extra Blue Bell trucks to put people at ease? Maybe with some whipped cream tankers?!
I am a bit concerned, though, about the swelling among the Reese’s Puffs. I’d like an epidemiologist to take a look at that.
