Saturday is the 16th annual McKinley Park Festival. There is plenty of room to spread out, social distance and take in all the festivities. The kids fishing contest starts at 5:30 p.m. and will be followed by some great music in the band shell at 7:30 p.m. and a fireworks show over the lake at dark. Thoughout the evening there will be several other events like demonstrations by the Creston Police department and some farmers markets vendors. Bring your chair or blanket and come join the fun and fresh air Saturday night.
Softball
Great to see Creston and Mount Ayr making it to the State of Iowa softball tournament this next week. Hopefully everyone stays safe and has a good time at the games.
MLB
Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association get started up this next week. In fact, baseball gets going tomorrow. Let’s hope that all goes well and there are no outbreaks of C-19 to disrupt the games. Baseball is going with a short season of 60 games for each team, while the NBA is trying to finish up last season.
August
It looks like the C-19 counts over the next couple of weeks will determine a lot of things. Like if there will be full fledged school this fall, will NCAA football happen and where is the country headed with this full scale pandemic? I’m hoping the pandemic numbers start going the other direction. It looks like more people are wearing masks and trying to get the numbers to go the other way. Even our president is starting to get the drift. It seems like disinfectant is getting a little easier to come by. I hear toilet paper is back in vogue! With more people ending up at home again the supply is going back down. Hamburger prices have come back down also. I actually did see some bikes on the racks at Walmart this week. It still looks like most people are not ready to jump an airplane as of yet. I guess we are still working on our “new normal!”
Corn
The sweet corn sure is good this year. It also looks like it will be a bumper year for tomatoes. The rains this past week have helped out the crops. Things were starting to look a little dry. But we have got some good timely rains to help everything out.
School
It will be an interesting school year this year. Looks like it will be “heck if do, heck if you don’t.” Some kids and teachers want to go back and some don’t. So how do you please any of this group? The problem is “who watches the kids if they don’t go to school?” Plus I don’t think half the kids today can do on-line learning with any proficiency. Many are already a semester behind due to the changes last spring. I’m afraid that another year of no classes will doom a lot of these kids for their future education. We can’t afford to get farther behind the rest of the world on education. We’ve been getting farther behind for the last 20 years or so. Everybody needs to take a breath and do the best they can under the circumstances to make whatever is about to happen work. Keep a positive attitude!
Golf
The Creston Chamber of Commerce golf tourney is coming up July 31st. The SWCC athletic fund raiser tournament is the next week on August 7. So, get a team together to help support two good causes.
Thought for the week
Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
— Honore de Balzac