TWF 312 - Farewell to Mr. Kight.

 Greetings, friends,

As I am sure many of you heard, Mr. Ernest J. Kight Jr., former Principal of Freeport High School and President of the Freeport School Board.  Mr. Kight was an assistant Principal at FHS when I was a student there at the turn of the millennium, and was the Principal for a chunk of the time when I worked at the high school, myself.

I'd like to tell a quick story that will hopefully encapsulate a bit of what it was like to work with him.

I once had to report graffiti in one of the bathrooms.  It turned out to be pretty innocuous, but one can never tell when first stumbling upon something.  As I was concerned about the content of the graffiti and wanted to make sure it was seen, I went - well - directly to Mr. Kight's office.  He made himself available immediately, then came with me to read what was on the walls, take pictures, and thanked me for bringing it directly to his attention so that it could be documented and cleaned up.

Aside from that, I know he was passionate about Freeport for a number of reasons.  For one, he himself was a student at Freeport High back in the day.  For two, he could always be seen at school sporting events, which brought an excitement to his eyes that's hard to tell someone about because words just kind of fail to spell it out.

Photo courtesy of Freeport Schools website.

I wish to extend my deepest condolences to his family, and my best wishes to all those who knew and loved him as we mourn at this time.

TWF 311 - CoVID Vaccine Shortages In Nassau County; lower infection rates (CoVID Update #10)

 Hello, friends,

Hopefully, by now, your back pain from digging out of this week's snowstorm has faded.  Mine...Is still present, but that's nothing new.

Today, I was flummoxed to see this tweet from Nassau County Executive Laura Curran:

I mean, what is there to say that isn't explicit with this tweet?  According to Curran, we are administering all of the vaccine we get, and we're only getting a mere pittance of what we need.  It'd be one thing if we were only inoculating 70% or so, but if you're ever gonna talk about "herd immunity" or "return to normalcy," that's only gonna come any time soon with a maximum-efficiency vaccination drive, and it is not efficient to leave a county which has plenty of spare potential-to-vaccinate without anything to do.

I have family members who are trying to get these shots and are navigating through the already labyrinthine madness that is the NYS vaccination system.  It's a sick joke to make senior citizens have to use computers to do this!  But when they can access the site, they are told there are no appointments available.  And this sounds like it could be the reason, why!  So, I don't know who to call out for this bullshit, but it's bullshit that needs to be called out.

CoVID Positivity Rates Falling!

With that said, I don't want to leave you thinking it's all bad news on the CoVID front.  We reported in late December that the CoVID positivity rate for Nassau County was pressing up against 10%, which was definitely a scary thing.

County Executive Curran reports that we've made significant progress:

Now, in fairness, we reported back in early November that rates were increasing at a potentially problematic rate.  At the time it was only 3.4% positivity, which wasn't too bad, at all, but wasn't good.  Then, of course, came holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the next thing you know we're at 10%.

It's almost like this was predicted at the time.

Stay safe, friends.