Her Father's Daughter

If you are of a certain age, as I am, then you grew up in an era where gender stereotypes were very much the norm.  Little girls played with dolls.  Little boys played with cars.  Mothers passed down to their daughters a love for cooking. Fathers passed down to their sons a love of sports.  Scream aloud if you must.  Do so understanding of course that your screams shall never be loud enough to drown out history.  It is what it is because it was what it was.  

Of course, even broad stroke stereotypes proved inapplicable in certain factual scenarios.  For instance, a little girl could be born into a family where her father's love of baseball would never have a male heir to claim it as his inheritance.  Sorry to shatter the misapprehension of all those who believe "Girl Dad" is a concept you 21st Century hipsters invented.  Feel free to take credit for inventing the term since as society has learned, people under a certain age are incapable of simply experiencing something without hanging some half-ass sobriquet on it.  Know, however, that girl dads existed long before "Girl Dad" did and shall continue to exist long after this particular flavor of the month is designated for assignment onto history's scrap heap.

Thomas Eves was a girl dad.  He and Helen had no sons.  Their only child was their daughter, Lisa. Thomas Eves, an otherwise intelligent and reasonable man, had a deep-seated, profound, and (I would submit inexplicable) love for the Baltimore Orioles.  Although he had no son to whom he could teach this love, he nevertheless had a child with whom he could share it.  He had Lisa. 

Lisa and I have been friends for twenty years.  She is as passionate and as articulate a baseball fan as I have ever known.  She has just one "flaw", which is her inherited love of the Orioles, for whom she cheers with a vigor that is neither related to nor dependent upon the quality of the product that the Os put out on the field. She is not a fair-weather fan.  She is a "I could not give a rat's ass about the weather" fan.  It is an attribute she inherited from her dad.  She is, as he was, the best type of fan. 

Thomas Eves died several years ago.  He died before Buck Showalter managed the Orioles through what was their most recent renaissance, with three playoff appearances between 2012 and 2016. I know though that the daughter to whom he passed on his love of baseball and his love of the Orioles sat glued to every pitch of every game, no doubt wearing her Orioles hat the whole time. 

Today, Lisa celebrates a birthday. Since she is younger than I am and I likely cannot outrun her for the rest of my life, I shall not state publicly which milestone she has reached today but shall instead offer this visual aid, which likely reveals more about how old I am than it shall ever reveal about her age:

While I hope her birthday is as happy as she deserves it to be, I have no idea how she shall spend it.  I imagine however, given that the Os host the Tampa Rays tonight, she will spend a portion of her evening keeping at least one eye on the game.  

Love, whether for baseball or for one's dad, never dies.  And even when that love brings us pain, we embrace it because we realize that the pleasure - the joy - it has always brought us far outweighs the pain.  A realization that is a cause for celebration even on all of the days of the year that are not our birthday...

...but doubly so on the day that is.  

Happy Birthday, Gracie.  

-AK 

The Price You Pay

You make up your mind, 

You choose the chance you take. 

You ride to where the highway ends 

And the desert breaks. 

Out on to an open road

You ride until the day.

You learn to sleep at night

With the price you pay. 

-Bruce Springsteen

Until about ten days ago, had you asked me to stake my life to my ability to correctly identify the starting right guard for the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs, Margaret would be firing up the incinerator as I type (although it occurs to me that regardless of my answer to that question, she might very well always have it cranked up and ready to go). 

I only learned the name Laurent Duvernay-Tardif when he announced that he is opting out of the 2020 NFL season.  He is from Montreal. He is a medical school graduate who, given the time demands of his full-time job and his inability to work in a residency, has not yet attained his medical license. It has not stopped him for helping others. He has spent the past several months, as an orderly, working in a long-term care facility in Montreal, helping care for COVID-19 patients. 

Last week he announced that he is not playing football this year.  He has "opted out" so that he can remain in Montreal, working as an orderly, on the front lines of the fight against this pandemic. In a statement he posted on Twitter, he explained his decision: 

Being at the front-line during this off-season has given me

a different perspective on this pandemic and the stress it 

puts on individuals and our health care system.  I cannot allow

myself to potentially transmit the virus in our communities 

simply to play the sport that I love.  If I am to take risks, 

I shall do it caring for patients. 

By opting out, he forgoes the $2.6 Million he was scheduled to make. He shall, instead, be paid $150,000 as a salary advance.  He goes off to serve his community with the support and love of his head coach, Andy Reid, his teammates, and the Chiefs. 

I was equally unfamiliar with the name Joseph J. Costa, M.D. until I read his obituary on-line yesterday morning.  Dr. Costa, fifty-six years young, ran the critical care division at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland.  While working tirelessly to treat COVID-19 patients, he contracted the disease himself.  This past Saturday morning, it killed him. 

Dr. Costa's husband, David Hart, told reporters that he had begged Dr. Costa, himself afflicted with a rare autoimmune disorder, to stay home in order to protect himself but that Dr. Costa, a hero to the men and women with whom he worked, simply could not.  

Mr. Hart said that Dr. Costa told him that he had to lead by example. He had to be willing to place himself in harm's way if he was going to direct those who worked for him to do the same. He could not ask others to risk that which he was unwilling to risk.  

Two extraordinary human beings, Joseph J. Costa, M.D. and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, to each of whom the meaning of "the price you pay" was self-evident.  The world would be better off if the rest of us had at least a modicum of their comprehension... 

Now they'd come so far

And they'd waited so long.

Just to end up caught in a dream

Where everything goes wrong.

Where the dark of night

Holds back the light of day.

And you've gotta stand and fight

For the price you pay.

-Bruce Springsteen  

-AK 

The Consequences of Weaponized Ignorance

America has responded to COVID-19 like a lazy science student:

study the textbook for a little while, then get bored and wing it.

The mixture of impatience and cockiness has cost thousands of lives.

The country has tricked itself into a false dilemma:  

We either save the economy or fight the virus. 

But the best way to save the economy was to fight the virus.

If we had done this properly and stuck with it,

we would be in much better shape now. 

-Michael Rosenberg

A quick trip into the WABAC Machine (not-so-very-long-ago edition):

We embrace technology and the advances it has brought us, including the advances we never knew we needed such as the ability to order shoes or play Angry Birds using our smartphone while going to the bathroom.  At the same time, we have consciously and aggressively embraced ignorance.  Worse yet, we have embraced it to the point of weaponizing it.  Ah, the irony, which I have little doubt is lost on those to whose behavior it speaks most pointedly.  

When did we the people of these United States become a people who flaunt our unwillingness to be challenged by anyone with an opposing point of view?  Or by anyone who might want to simply educate us - even just a little bit?  Was it when we elected a President of the United States who wears his "I don't read" mantra as if it is a badge of honor?  I know not.  Perhaps.  On the other hand, perhaps his election was not its beginning but its culmination. 

I know simply that our weaponization of ignorance has permeated our politics at every level.  Political opponents are no longer rivals or even adversaries.  Now, they are enemy combatants. As such, they are not entitled to certain rights, such as engaging in fact-based, law-based, substantive debate on issues of importance.  Debate has been replaced by the rapid repetition of attacks, insults, and lies, aimed at reinforcing in the minds and hearts of supporters the idea that everything said by everyone on the other side of the issue is not only a lie but a lie aimed at taking an inalienable right away from them, or worse yet, manipulating them into surrendering it voluntarily.  

We have time to correct our course - right up to the point when we run out of it altogether.  Course correction is not a Democrat thing.  Course correction is not a Republican thing.  It is an American thing.

I wrote that here, in this space, on Christmas Eve.  I wrote it seven short months ago.  I wrote it at a time when I had little idea what COVID-19 was or the extent to which it was going to alter not just my life but everyone's life.  

One's true colors are not revealed in the best of times but, rather, in the worst of times. In the five months that COVID-19 has ravaged the United States, taking the lives of more than 148,000 and the livelihoods of millions more, the true color of far too many Americans has been revealed to be neither red, white, nor blue but, instead, selfishness. 

As a student of human behavior, the things people do rarely surprise me.  The ignorance on prominent display across America, perhaps at no address more prominently than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., has not surprised me. It has, however, disappointed me.  More than that, however, it has angered me.  

Opinions without evidence to support them are not facts. No matter how loudly you proclaim them. No matter how faithfully you and your fellow blind mice worship at the feet of the Prevaricator-in-Chief and his newest mouthpiece, Kayleigh McEnany.  Spoiler Alert for Ms. McEnany:  Paw Patrol has not been cancelled. Lego has not stopped selling Police-themed sets.  She knew that to be true even when she said what she said from the podium during her July 24, 2020 press briefing and still she said it.  Why?  Her mission is to distract from an abject failure of leadership. The best way to do it? Foment outrage over any target of opportunity. 

There is no outrage quite like faux outrage, which after all is a consequence of weaponized ignorance. 

-AK 

Glory Glory Colorado!

Ralphie 

Photo Credit: 

Jillian Sorger Molee

Congratulations are in order for the men and women of the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. They have developed a portable, saliva-based, COVID-19 test that is able to return results within forty-five minutes.  As July gives way to August and millions of families across the United States grapple with whether to allow their sons and daughters to return to school in September - and countless school districts, colleges, and universities do the same - a COVID-19 test that is easy to administer and that returns a result in less than an hour has a practical application. 

Between my undergraduate studies in political science, my pursuit of my J.D. in law school, and my career in the law, you could fill a thimble with what I know and understand about how this test works and still have ample room for your thumb.  Rather than try to explain it, I simply direct your attention here so you can learn firsthand from the people who developed it. 

As someone who has been proud to be a Colorado Buffalo for three-plus decades, I applaud the critically important work that is being done by CU's great minds, including the good folks of the BioFrontiers Institute.  Knowledge trumps ignorance.  It always has.  

For the sake of all of us, including my five grandchildren (the oldest of whom is only three years old), its winning streak had best continue. 

Norlin Library West Entrance

Photo Credit: 

Adam Kenny

-AK 

Impermanent Beauty

By way of illustration, I offer Friday at the beach.  I woke up to a rain-filled forecast.  However, since at dawn, the forecast projected the likelihood of rain at 50%, I figured I would only get rained on - at worst - half the time.  

But I digress. 

Off I went into the heat and humidity that Jersey is in July.  Having headed south into Spring Lake on 3rd Avenue, I did not make it out to the water until I started heading north towards home.  There, for just a moment, I saw the sun trying to fight its way into the early morning sky, which was beautiful.  

As it always is.

As it turns out, Friday was a day when the sun lost the battle. Shortly after I completed my run, it ceded the sky to the clouds and, every now and again thereafter, rain.  

A reminder to me that when offered a glimpse, no matter how brief, of something beautiful, take it.   

-AK 

A Salute to Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity

This is Major Tom to Ground Control

I'm stepping through the door.

And I'm floating in a most peculiar way,

And the stars look very different today...

...Here am I floating 'round my tin can

Far above the moon.

Planet Earth is blue

And there's nothing I can do.

- "Space Oddity"

David Bowie

You might have missed it, inasmuch as in this Administration the Chief Executive's "discovery" of the fact that wearing a face covering substantially reduces the likelihood of you expelling disease (including but not limited to COVID-19) on others when you sneeze, cough, or simply talk to them was announced with the fanfare of "The Earth is a not square like a pizza box but, instead, a circle like a pizza! Well, most pizza.  Not Sicilian."  

But I digress.  

The men and women of NASA continue to do extraordinary things, as they have always done.  This week, NASA posted on its YouTube channel (the slogan of which  is not "One small step for man. One giant leap in views and subscribers" but perhaps should be) a video simply entitled "Mars in 4K".  

To call it "breathtaking" is to engage in the basest form of understatement but much like gravity, the limits of my vocabulary hold me down.

Grab yourself a cup of coffee or other beverage of your choice, click "play" on the video, turn the volume up so you can listen to the narration, and enjoy the show. Remind yourself every now and again that you are looking at images of a planet that is 140 million miles from Earth, made possible because really smart people figured out (a) how to build the Rovers that took these videos; (b) how to get them to Mars; and (c) how to get them to record these images and broadcast them home to Earth for evaluation and study.  

Intelligence matters.  Spoiler alert:  It always has. 

Do not feel compelled to accept my word on this point.  

Ask Major Tom...

-AK 

A Child Arrived Just The Other Day...

...Thursday to be precise. 

Welcome to the world, Shea Denise MacMaster, the second member of Nana and Pop Pop's Class of 2020 and the fifth member of our quintet of beautiful grandchildren. 

The world into which you have been born is - to be candid - going through an extraordinarily rough patch.  

Fear not.  You shall be just fine.  You have been born into a family that loves you unconditionally and has since we first learned of your plan to join us, which we did many months ago.  Your mom and dad love you and shall protect you and provide for you always.  Your big sister Abigail?  She will have you talking and walking in little to no time.  Of that, Pop Pop is supremely confident. 

Welcome to the world.  Your presence elates us.

-AK 

Wish Big!

Today, my sister Kara, one of the world's genuinely good souls (so good in fact that Wilma and I spent our childhoods convinced that one of the three of us had alien DNA) celebrates a birthday.  

While I have no idea how one celebrates a birthday in these COVID-19 times, however and wherever she spends it (although, for the love of Goofy, do not let it be Walt Disney World - now join us for a chorus of "It's a Small Ventilator After All"  - no thank you very much!), may she have the birthday that she deserves...

...and if there is a mix-up and she instead gets the one I deserve, may she keep a good sense of humor about it.  She very well may need it. 

Happy Birthday, Stel!  

-AK 

play ball!

I characterize myself as a realist.

-Dr. Anthony Fauci

Today is Opening Day for the 2020 Major League Baseball season.  This evening, the Yankees shall begin their campaign on the road against the defending World Series Champions, the Washington Nationals.  Gerritt Cole is making his first start for the Bombers and Max Scherzer takes the ball for the Nats.  Two studs in the role of starting pitcher and a third stud toeing the rubber just long enough to throw out the first pitch: 

Photo Credit: 

Getty Images

I love baseball.  Typically, Opening Day is one of my favorite days of the year.  This year? Not so much. I have missed baseball.  That much is undeniable.  However, I cannot shake the feeling in my gut that our desire to grab fast to something - to anything - that makes us feel good in these historically trying times, is clouding our better judgment.  I hope like hell I am wrong.  I hope like hell that the 2020 MLB Season, starting today, is played to its conclusion in the autumn with a World Series Champion being crowned and that it is played by teams of fully-healthy players from Opening Day to the season's final out.  MLB has two teams in Florida, which as of yesterday afternoon, reported on its own Florida Department of Health COVID-19 page (under the heading "Current Situation in Florida") 379,619 total COVID-19 cases, including 22,243 people hospitalized.  In this abbreviated, sixty-game regular season the Yankees play the Rays ten times and the Marlins three times. 

There is no second chance to make a first impression. 

-AK 

Kudos on an Exceedingly Well-Done Job

Margaret and I have spent the better part of the past six summers relaxing on the sand of the 17th Avenue Beach in Belmar.  Although the faces have changed annually, we have been impressed without exception by the men and women of the Belmar Beach Patrol who keep us safe.  

There are twenty-one Belmar beaches along the Atlantic Ocean, from 1st Avenue Beach at the town's northern end (Avon-by-the-Sea) to North Boulevard Beach on the town's southern end (Spring Lake) and on summer weekends they are packed with people.  This past weekend, as the temperatures soared and the Atlantic's temperature took on the feel of bath water, the beach and the ocean each teemed with activity. 

We marvel, sitting as we usually do about 25-50 feet south of our guards' stand, just how active they are during a given day.  There usually are three lifeguards manning a stand at a given time and, more often that not, it appears as if while two guard the sunbathers and the swimmers like sheepdogs watching over their flock, the third member of the team is doing some type of training, whether running, rowing one of the rescue boats, swimming, or paddling the rescue board.  Their level of preparedness is equal to their level of physical fitness, which is outstanding. 

Saturday afternoon, on the 8th Avenue Beach, approximately one-half mile north of us, the lifeguards on duty participated in a life-saving rescue in which neither the rescuers nor the rescued dipped even a single toe in the water.  An eight-year-old boy apparently dug himself an eight-foot-deep hole in the sand, which then collapsed around him.  911 was called and the all-star team of Belmar first responders, including the Police Department, the Fire Department, Belmar First Aid, and the Beach Patrol, sprung into action, rescuing the lad, and saving his life. 

Well done, ladies and gentlemen,  as always. 

-AK 

Requiem For A Heavyweight

John Lewis never lacked for courage.  Not once.  And he made this nation, and each of us, better for it. 

Safe journey home, sir.  

-AK 

News Worth Sharing

I have known Steve Ashton for most of my life, which unfortunately for him means that he has known me for most of his.  I have actually seen quite a bit of him - and his wife Donna - these past few months.  Their labor of love, Ashton Brewing, is located on Lincoln Boulevard in Middlesex, perhaps one mile from my house.  Its proximity, coupled with the deliciousness of its product, has turned it into a regular, Thursday night stop on my way in from the office.  I pick up the beers that accompany me to the Shore for the weekend.  

My personal favorite? 

Ashton Brewing Company's 

Jersey Dreamin' Pilsner

Label Art Credit: Donna Ashton

While I would not steer you wrong on a subject as near and dear to my heart as quality, great-tasting beer brewed by quality people, you are not constrained to accept my word as the gospel on the subject of Ashton Brewing.  I invite you to take a few minutes and read the July 12, 2020 piece Peter Culos wrote on Ashton Brewing for jerseybites.com.  

If your schedule permits, book time this afternoon or on Wednesday through Saturday evening to sit outside on the patio and experience their beers firsthand.  If you live in/around Middlesex, you can enjoy Hop Dawg Double IPA on tap at Ferraro's on Lincoln Boulevard. 

2020 has proven not to be a year replete with pleasant discoveries.  So, when one presents itself to you, embrace it and enjoy it.  You will be happy you did.  

-AK 

Bridger Walker Saves The World

Poetic license?  Perhaps.  To date, the only person whose life can be accurately documented as having been saved by Bridger Walker of Cheyenne, Wyoming is his four-year-old sister.  However, Bridger is only six years old. Even if, technically speaking, he has not yet saved the world, there is no reason to believe he will not do so - by age ten. 

Bridger and his little sister were visiting at a friend's house on July 9 when a dog that lived at the residence, described in some news reports as a German shepherd mix charged towards his little sister.  Six-year-old Bridger stepped into the dog's path and bore the brunt of the attack.  The dog bit him on his face, causing wounds that had to be repaired surgically and gashing this little boy so severely that his cuts required more than ninety stitches to close. 

He is six years old. 

He did what he set out to do.  He saved his little sister's life.  

He is six years old. 

Bleeding and injured, he took her hand and led her out of harm's way.  After it was over, he told his aunt that, "If someone had to die, I thought it should be me." 

He is six years old. 

Photo Credit: Nicole Noel Walker (Instagram)

His aunt Nikki shared Bridger's story on Instagram because young Bridger is an Avengers fan (when he is not moonlighting as an Avenger himself apparently) and she wanted to make some of his heroes aware of what he had done.  

Mission accomplished.  

He is only six years old. 

He is a remarkable little boy.  May the grace with which he lives his life remain with him always.  I know not whether the world needs costumed superheroes but I know for damn sure we need Bridger Walker.  

We always have.  

-AK 

The Palpable Difference

In case you are confused about who, exactly, Dr. Anthony Fauci is, this might provide you the clarity you need: 

Photo Credit: National Institute of Health

Originally appeared in Science Magazine March 27, 2015

Desperate times call for desperate measures, which explains why the Trump Administration's attack dogs, whose overt disdain for science and polysyllabic words is worn as a badge of honor, have ramped up their "Deflect and Distract" campaign at Dr. Fauci's expense. As it turns out, you cannot simply wish away a pandemic by (a) refusing to do anything about it; (b) making up things about it as you go along; and (c) wishing it away by simply no longer talking about it.  Who knew?  After all, a very stable genius informed his countrymen in mid-February that by mid-April, once it got hotter, COVID-19 would "go away". Yesterday, forty states reported a two-week increase in their COVID-19 cases, including those winter wonderlands of California, Florida, and Texas.  The National Weather Service has issued warnings for residents of Arizona, California, and Nevada in anticipation of temperatures that are expected to hit 126 degrees for Death Valley, California and 117 degrees for Phoenix, Arizona.  One cannot help but wonder at what temperature heat actually kills COVID-19 and whether it is the same temperature at which the COVID-19 stricken person spontaneously combusts? 

I do not know Adam Phillippy, a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute (nor do I know, in the interest of full disclosure, what the heck the National Human Genome Research Institute is or what it does), and I do not have a Twitter account but I love this tweet of his from earlier this week, which was shared in this article and I applaud him for it: 

Adam Phillippy

@aphillippy

·

23h

Throwback to 5 years ago when Tony Fauci, at 74 yo, was suiting up to treat an Ebola patient himself because he "wanted to show his staff that he wouldn't ask them to do anything he wouldn't do himself". This is what leadership looks like. https://sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/why-nihs-anthony-fauci-treating-ebola-patients-himself…

 

-AK 

Sessions Got Gekkoed

Jeff Sessions lost the runoff election Tuesday in Alabama to be the Republican Party's candidate for the United States Senate seat presently held by Democrat Doug Jones.  Tommy Tuberville, of all people, defeated him.  Losing to Saban (Nick, not Lou) would have been more readily understood.  

Mr. Sessions formerly represented the people of Alabama as a United States Senator.  It was while he served in the Senate in February 2016 that he rather (in)famously became the first sitting Senator to endorse then-candidate Trump for President.  It was that endorsement that led to Sessions being named Trump's first Attorney General of the United States, a post from which he resigned eighteen months later (at Trump's urging), having alienated Trump by recusing himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, which recusal led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as Independent Counsel. In other words, Trump did not blame himself or his campaign for the investigation.  He blamed Sessions.  He now has the revenge he so vigorously and transparently craved. 

Waking up yesterday morning to see Mr. Sessions on the wrong end of Tuesday's election results made me - and probably me alone - think of Oliver Stone's Wall Street and the great Martin Sheen.  Sheen, of course, played Carl Fox, the blue-collar, hard-working father of Wall Street wannabe Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) who is seduced by, and ultimately destroyed by, Gordon Gekko.  It is during Gekko's seduction of the younger Fox that Bud receives excellent advice from his father, which he ignores of course, a decision that has dire consequences: 

I wonder if Jeff Sessions has Netflix or Amazon Prime.  He now has a lot of time on his hands.  I know not whether he is a movie fan but perhaps Mr. Stone's opus will appeal to him.  Or perhaps it will seem all-too-close to home. 

A lesson ignored is a lesson learned. 

-AK 

Toes, Not Heads, Belong in the Sand

The Borough of Belmar's beachfront stretches numerically from the 1st Avenue Beach at Belmar's northern end through its penultimate beach, the 20th Avenue Beach, which is the last "numbered" beach before Belmar's southernmost beach, which is North Boulevard. There are twenty-one separate "entrances to the beach" on the Belmar beachfront.   

For a period of time this past Sunday, overcrowding on Belmar's beaches led to the simultaneous closure of fourteen of Belmar's twenty-one "entrances to the beach".  Methinks that when your "Summer of COVID-19" beach policy does nothing to avert such a situation, it is time to consider revamping or revising said policy.  

I appreciate the fact that Belmar sells daily badges at $9.00 per, which every person fifteen years of age and older must purchase to access the beach, and that the town's coffers need as many of those $9.00 cookies as it can gobble up.  That being said, this past Sunday they permitted the situation on their beaches to get completely out of hand.  

I respectfully disagree with Belmar's Mayor, Mark Walsifer that limiting or eliminating altogether the sale of daily badges on certain days of the week, such as Sunday, would run Belmar afoul of the Public Trust Doctrine.   Apparently, I am not alone in that belief.  This past Sunday, Belmar's neighbor to its north, Avon-by-the-Sea, and its neighbor to the south, Spring Lake, both reduced the number of daily badges they had available to sell, which funneled people turned away from those two towns into Belmar.  

Margaret and I have purchased six Belmar Season Badges, which used to cost $55.00 and now cost $70.00, annually since 2015.  We have enjoyed hours of relaxation in the sun and surf on "our" beach; the 17th Avenue Beach.  Sunday morning, we went up on the beach early with Ryan, Suzanne, and their three littles.  When the Aldrich clan was packing up at about 11:30 am to head home for lunch and for naps, we opted to call it a day.  Our beach was already teeming with people and as we left the beach, there were countless more waiting to get on the beach.  We hung out at home for the rest of the day, which is where I was when I saw the Borough of Belmar IG post at or about 2:00 pm declaring the simultaneous "temporary closure" of 2/3 of Belmar's beachfront.  Permitting a situation to exist that requires that "solution" is not merely reckless, which it is, but stunningly incompetent. 

If the governing body has a plan, then it needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new one.  One that at least gives a wink and a nod to public health while concerning itself with the Borough's fiscal health. 

-AK