The latest
Surge keeps going in RVs and camping during the coronavirus pandemic
There’s a campground, rather peculiarly, in downtown Gibson City in Ford County along Route 9. We pass it several times a year on our way to the whimsical Harvest Moon Twin Drive-In.
The campground has been busy. One night my wife and our daughter thought it was packed to capacity.
This year, this 2020, is different.
Something is happening with people, camping and RVs during the pandemic. Part is related to schooling and working remotely, part to staycations and part to safety.
Read the full story by Dale Bowman here.
News
11 a.m. Democrats face quandary on coronavirus vaccine support as election nears
President Donald Trump is escalating his promise for a coronavirus vaccine before Election Day.
But across America, Democrats, independents and even some Republicans do not trust his administration to produce a safe and effective vaccine on such an aggressive timeline. Such hesitancy threatens to exacerbate the public health risk for millions of Americans whenever a vaccine is released.
With the Nov. 3 election fast approaching, Democratic officials face a delicate political challenge.
Should they attack Trump’s vaccine claims too aggressively, Democrats risk further undermining public confidence in a possible lifesaving medicine while looking as though they are rooting against a potential cure. But if they don’t push back, it makes it easier for Trump to use the real or imagined prospect of a vaccine to boost his reelection campaign.
Read the full story here.
8:15 a.m. ‘I guess they’re waiting for us to die’
Nearly 7,000 Chicago hotel workers who remain laid off due to the pandemic are at risk of losing their health insurance at the end of the month.
The Friday rally, which lasted roughly two hours, began at Daley Plaza before participants marched through downtown streets, then returned to the plaza. Chicago police officers blocked intersections for the parade of protesters as they paraded through the streets.
It’s difficult for workers to pay medical bills when it’s unclear when or if their jobs will return, said Sarah Lyons, spokeswoman for Unite Here Local 1.
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that up to 12 million Americans may have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic. And almost half of the 16.9 million jobs in the U.S. hospitality sector were lost in March and April. As of September, more than a quarter of workers in that sector remain unemployed.
The hotels have not been paying their share of employees’ health care premiums since March, Lyons said — a position disputed by a Hyatt official.
Read more about how hotel workers are fighting for their health insurance.
New Cases
Analysis & Commentary
2:30 p.m. Remote learning compounds longstanding challenges facing bilingual students like me
Sometimes it’s difficult to consider being bilingual an advantage.
The road to achieving what is seen as a powerful skill leaves a mark. For a Mexican like me, it’s imposter syndrome.
Picture laughter erupting from a second grade class after a non-English speaker can’t respond to a question like, “Is your birthday coming up?” Or a 9-year-old practicing the word “world” for two weeks because it will come up in conversation some way or another. Seriously. Try it. Your tongue does about four movements for a word with one syllable.
Read the full column by Ismael Perez here.
7:47 a.m. Rosh Hashanah livestreamed in COVID-19 era
The Jewish year of … checking … 5781 begins at sundown Friday, and is a reminder that the Chosen People are not newcomers at celebrating holidays during hard times. As grim as the COVID pandemic has been, it doesn’t hold a candle to Babylonian captivity or Roman persecution, the Inquisition or the Holocaust.
Not yet, anyway.
The business of maintaining Jewish identity, already under siege by modern life, is complicated in the Plague Year of 2020 as Judaism celebrates Rosh Hashanah — literally, “head of the year” — and then atones for sins in the year to come at Yom Kippur nine days later.
“This is an interesting year, unlike any other,” said Rabbi Steven Lowenstein, whom I called because his synagogue, Am Shalom of Glencoe, is one of many streaming high holiday services.
