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From studios in the BIC Center on America’s Emerald Isle, this is the W-V-B-I Community Calendar for Monday, November 16th, 2020. |
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Fasten your seat belts (or bar the door) for lockdown round two. The state has imposed a raft of new restrictions on the state in response to the growing number of positive COVID-19 test results and concerns about hospital capacity. Biggest impact on the island? Dine-in meals are done until at least December 8th and B-I-C-S high school students will shift to remote learning on Wednesday.
BICS principal and superintendent Wil Cwikiel wants to be sure all students are in class on Monday and Tuesday so high school students can get ready for a shift to learning at home. The school intends to continue in-person classes for pre-school through 8th grade for now. The School Board’s Return to School Committee will meet on Wednesday to review next steps.
While the new order isn’t nearly as restrictive as the governor’s initial round of lockdown orders, it will shutter a lot of activities effective on Wednesday.
Also out are in-person classes at colleges, and high school sports are suspended. The new restrictions also shutter theaters, stadiums, arcades, bowling centers, ice rinks, indoor water parks and group fitness classes (although individual gym time is allowed). There’s no change to the indoor gathering limit of 10 people at your house, but now no more than two households can meet in one place. Outdoor gatherings are now capped at 25 people. It appears that college and professional sports may continue without spectators subject to compliance with safety procedures. Also allowed to remain open (subject to occupancy limits, masking requirements and data collection for contact tracing) are retail businesses, salons, barber shops, public transit, child-care centers, parks and health-care facilities are still open.
Republican legislative leaders are criticizing the governor for once again going it alone on her decisions. They say they are ready to collaborate. She says they don’t have a plan.
In addition to orders on COVID, Governor Whitmer also took action this weekend to permanently shut down the pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac. The state notified Enbridge that it was terminating the easement granting rights for the pipeline. The state says the original easement was invalid and that, even if it was valid, Enbridge has repeatedly violated its terms. The actions require that Enbridge shutdown the line by May next year and then permanently remove it. Enbridge says the termination is invalid. Critics say the action puts Michigan’s energy future at risk—that about 60% of the propane used in the U-P comes by Line 5 and that there is no practical plan to replace that delivery capacity. What happens to the tunnel that Enbridge is building to replace Line 5? Regulators say they continue to process the pending applications for that, but critics say the shutdown order calls into question the need for the tunnel. The entire dispute is no doubt headed to the courts.
In other shutdown news, power was out on the island for almost everyone on the island last evening, but it seemed to be restored pretty quickly. G-L-E still has outages on the mainland, though, and at one point yesterday afternoon as many as 200,000 homes and businesses were without power across the state.
State health officials reported more than 14 thousand new COVID-19 cases and 183 new deaths over the weekend. Average for new cases is now more than five thousand a day and 65 for deaths. The number of active cases in the state is at 110,722. In our region, there were 267 new cases and two new deaths. 16 of the new cases were in Charlevoix. The two deaths were in Emmet. There are now 2,129 active cases in our 8 county region, which is averaging 101 new cases a day and 2 deaths a day.
No change in data from the Health Center this morning. They are awaiting results on nine tests with 225 run so far throughout the crisis. |
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Now, here’s what’s happening on your island…or maybe we should say not happening. It looks like the Governor’s orders will shut down most activities again, though the provisions on organized sports may allow Pickleball to continue. But group exercise classes are out and it appears that movies will be, too. Pickleball and the Arthritis Foundation Exercise program can continue tomorrow, though, because the order doesn’t go into effect until Wednesday.
That leaves us with our meeting planner for the week: School has a National Honor Society induction for new members set for Tuesday, but only students, staff and family members can attend in person. You should be able to see it on Zoom. Wednesday, the St. James Public Works Committee is meeting at 11 at the Township Hall. Thursday, Library Board meets at 9 at the Library and the Joint Telecommunications Advisory Committee meets at 4:30 at the BIC Center. More details and info on remote attendance, which is encouraged for all meetings, are in the calendar entries online.
Will there be church services in-person this weekend? That doesn’t seem top be directly addressed in the new order, but presumably capacity limits will continue to apply. We’ll hope to have more on that front tomorrow.
[Don’t forget about the BIC Center W-V-B-I 2020 Raffle. Go to raffle dot bic center dot org if you would like to get tickets. Or get them at the BIC Center from desk.] |
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Keep up to date on COVID-19 news with the W-V-B-I COVID-19 info page. Click COVID-19 Info in the menu at W-V-B-I dot net. |
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Weather, here there and everywhere – presented every day with the support of Hogarth’s Pest Control: |
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Today A slight chance of snow showers, mixing with rain after 9am, then gradually ending. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 39. Breezy, with a west wind 15 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. Tonight Scattered snow showers after 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 27. Blustery, with a northwest wind 15 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 35 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Tuesday A 20 percent chance of snow showers before 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 34. Northwest wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Tuesday Night Mostly cloudy, with a low around 25. Northwest wind 5 to 15 mph. Wednesday Mostly cloudy, with a high near 45. Light and variable wind becoming south 10 to 15 mph in the morning. Wednesday Night Mostly cloudy, with a low around 36. Thursday Mostly cloudy, with a high near 51. Breezy. Thursday Night Mostly cloudy, with a low around 37. Friday Mostly cloudy, with a high near 46. Friday Night A chance of showers after 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 35. Saturday A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 46. Saturday Night A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 34. Sunday Mostly cloudy, with a high near 43. |
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Out on the big drink… |
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Today W wind 15 to 20 kt, with gusts as high as 25 kt. A slight chance of showers before 11am. Waves 4 to 6 ft. Tuesday NW wind around 20 kt, with gusts as high as 30 kt. A slight chance of rain and snow showers before 1pm. Waves 4 to 5 ft. Wednesday W wind 5 to 15 kt becoming S in the afternoon. Mostly cloudy. Waves 1 to 2 ft. |
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Water Temps: 43 at White Shoal and 48 at the mid-lake buoy southwest of Gull Island—with five foot waves out there this morning after some 10 footers yesterday. |
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TRAFFIC: None, nada, zip. But, let’s be careful out there. |
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BIRTHDAYS: Kerrie Gillespie, Sy Engelsman and Linda Wearn are celebrating. Happy Birthday to Kerrie, Linda and Sy, and if we missed you on our list, happy birthday to you from all of us at WVBI and your Beaver Island Community Center. |
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ON THIS DAY in 2006 Sal Khan posts first tutoring videos on YouTube. Hedge-fund analyst Sal Khan posts his first math how-to videos on YouTube so his cousin and the growing list of other family members he’s tutoring can watch at their own pace. By the fall of 2009, Khan will have quit his job to focus full time on his nonprofit, Khan Academy, with the mission to ‘provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. (bing.com) |
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WORD OF THE DAY: snivel (verb) [SNIV-ul], which means: to run at the nose; to snuff mucus up the nose audibly : snuffle; to cry or whine with snuffling; to speak or act in a whining, sniffling, tearful, or weakly emotional manner. There’s never been anything pretty about sniveling. Snivel, which originally meant simply “to have a runny nose,” was probably snyflan in Old English. It’s likely related to sniffle, not surprisingly, and also to an Old English word for mucus, snofl. It’s even related to the Middle Dutch word for a cold, snof, and the Old Norse word for “snout,” which is snoppa. There’s also a connection to nan, a Greek verb meaning “flow.” Nowadays, we mostly use snivel as we have since the 1600s: to refer to self-pitying whining, whether or not such sniveling is accompanied by unchecked nasal flow. (Merriam-Webster) |
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Now, to wrap up for this Beaver Island Monday… |
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Here’s a thought for the day from Kahn Academy founder Sal Khan: “You only have so much time in the day, and you only have so many working years. Where do you want to invest that life?” On a lighter note: How do you send a pop up to the Crew Dragon spaceship getting ready to dock with the international space station? With a bottle rocket. |
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That’s the W-V-B-I Community Calendar for Monday, November 16th, 2020. I’m Kevin Boyle reporting from the Langford Family WVBI Studios of the Voice of Beaver Island wishing you a great day and asking: why not go ahead and make it the best day ever? And, thanks for listening. |
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