As Tough As 2020 Was, There Were Some Bright Spots In Water Valley
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STREET TALK
By Mickey Howley
WVMSA Director
Maybe you know the term “mulligan.” It is a golfing term for a chance to do a shot or stroke over. I believe you ask for it once something has really screwed up. I really don’t know how the term is properly used in golf, I’ve only played one game and that was enough for me. Nothing against it, just not my thing.
I like to sail, and you might say well that’s dumb because we have motors for boats now and what’s the point of going slow for hours and usually coming back to the same place? I’m not saying golf or sailing are the most productive ways to spend time. But they do get one outside for more than several uninterrupted hours and that is something, be it just a country walk as well, we all could use especially now.
As for a year’s mulligan, almost no one wants a 2020 do over, I’d be happy to go right to 2022 now. But what is behind a mulligan is the understandable hope for a different result now that one clearly sees the shot and the course ahead.
And the course ahead, in the chip shot range, looks not much better. The pandemic and the economic crisis resulting from it will last way into and perhaps beyond 2021.
As for the cause, the virus, there’s a new more contagious mutation, though with the same lethality. And it has been an asymmetrical financial crisis, unlike the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, it has made the ultra-rich richer and the poor poorer and really put the hurt on women in the workforce. It has put a damper on Main Street that is hard to explain other than it has not been good overall.
Doctor Fauci says, “There’s no running away from the numbers.” In early November, the U.S. broke the 100k cases per day barrier, last week the US went over 300k cases per day. One can argue about the testing case numbers, but with over 350,000 having died from this, that’s an easy number to tally and a hard one, too. Dead is dead. Someone told me the newly dead must have had some complicating conditions, my response was; yeah, they were breathing.
Again, I apologize for harping on this, but the economic reality is things will not be better for this Main Street or any other until this pandemic is gone.
Let’s be optimistic for a moment. There was some good in 2020. There is a new Big Crappie sign. More businesses opened than closed. There are businesses back in the Hendricks Building. A new police and fire headquarters was renovated out of the dormant National Guard facility. The Water Valley schools got much needed significant renovations and updates.
By far the biggest positive thing was the rehabilitation of the Rice-Stix building into a multi-tenant education facility. Many people made that happen, but it most certainly would not have happened without Kagan Coughlin leading point.
