The Other Side: One Good Thing

Here’s one thing (not the one in the title up there) that you can learn from reading this (assuming you don’t know it already):

Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand.

There are a couple of ideas as to why it may seem to be the case that they do. One is that they dig holes for their eggs, so when an ostrich inspects what’s going on in there, the head seems to be buried.

This photo of an ostrich is taken from a webpage at the San Diego Zoo site. If your kids are at home and you want them to learn about animals, then go here: https://animals.sandiegozoo.org It is well worth their time—and yours.

The other one is that when there’s danger, it flops flat to the ground and given the coloring of the neck and head and that of the terrain where ostriches are typically found (savanna and desert regions), the head seems to be in the ground because it, unlike the body, isn’t readily discernable.

And one more thing since I’ve gone down this rabbit hole (ostrich hole?) and because some of you may be at home with your kids and want to provide a bit of education for them.

According to the San Diego Zoo, which is to animals what the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is to racing (if you’ve not been to either, you must absolutely visit when things return to normal), “Ostriches can sprint in short bursts up to 43 miles per hour (70 kilometers per hour), and they can maintain a steady speed of 31 miles per hour (50 kilometers per hour).”

(I wonder if they’d be ticketed for six over on a residential street?)

The reason why I started looking at the ostrich information is because while I know that it is important to stay up to date on what’s going on vis-à-vis COVID-19—and remember the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website needs to be the go-to, not your Uncle Louie’s Facebook page—enough is becoming too much.

So while I am not suggesting that anyone bury their heads in the sand, metaphorically speaking, I do think we all need to realize that we’re going to get through this.

The Other Side—and I don’t mean the Great Beyond, so don’t look at it that way—is going to be different. The industry is going to be changed. There is going to be tough going, but this industry is more familiar than most in terms of dealing with that.

Stuff happens—typhoons, hurricanes, fires, floods, strikes, supply chain disruptions, etc.—and adjustments are made and we get on with it.

So what I want to try to do is find things about The Other Side that I can bring to you. Something that looks at where we’re going to go and perhaps how we’re going to get there. If you have an idea, send me a note.

The Thing

I read the most recent essay by my friend Peter DeLorenzo on his autoextremist.com website that contains a passage that is the one good thing:

This crisis is forcing us to remember that we’re all Americans, and that we’re not only in this together, the only way we’re going to emerge on the other side of this is to stay together and help each other. This virus doesn’t care about our political affiliation, or our ethnic background; it doesn’t care about where we live, or what we do, or what our financial standing is; it doesn’t care about our educational credentials, whether we’re CEOs, or toiling at a 24-Hour Gas ‘N Go.

It’s the most ferociously democratic predator we, as a nation, have ever faced. Which is why it is not only forcing us to come together as a nation; it is forcing the collective “we” to be better, to be more compassionate, to look after each other to a degree that we couldn’t even fathom before this moment in time.

And that is one very good thing to come out of this.

Yes it is.

And about those ostriches: Were they to put their heads in the sand, they couldn’t breathe.

Let’s not put our heads in the sand. But cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze.