6 • Thursday, May 6, 2021 - Rock Valley Publishing
Rock Valley Publishing
Viewpoint
May 6, 2021 • 6
Too many goodbyes left to say It’s been five months. Five long months, but there are still so many things to do. So many goodbyes left to say. Most of them are symbolic and silent, but they are goodbyes nonetheless. Between just him and me. Everyone else has said their goodbyes in their own way. They were done long ago. I’m far from done. I don’t think I’ll ever be done saying goodbye. I would’t want to be, honestly. Saying a final goodbye would be too hard. I’m not ready for that. I won’t ever be. Still, there are things to do — goodbyes, if you will. I have to shut off his phone. I plan to do that soon. We’ve transferred all the photos and videos off of it. No one calls him anymore. In fact the phone hasn’t been charged for a few weeks, so there’s no reason, really, to keep the account. No reason except it’s one more difficult goodbye to get through. All the utilities are still in his name. More goodbyes, once I get to those tasks. His wallet, driver’s license, watch and glasses. No one needs them anymore. No one can use them. I should get rid of them. I suppose I should say goodbye. Instead they sit in the drawer next to my bed. Sometimes I hold them before sleep or right after waking. Eventually I’ll be ready to say goodbye, but not quite yet. I’ve yet to transfer car titles. More goodbyes. I still have his vehicle. Probably should sell it at some point. Another goodbye. His tools. What do I do with his tools? I don’t know how to use them. My kids may want them at some point. Do we keep them just in case, or do we say goodbye? I donated most of his clothes to charity. His closet is empty, reminding me daily of that goodbye. I packed his shoes up, also for
Business brief
By
JILL PERTLER Columnist
donation. They are still in the basement waiting for my goodbye. I hope to move soon. Saying goodbye to the home where we raised our family will be significant. There is the wall where we measured each child’s height as they grew from toddlerhood to the teen years. There is the kitchen table where we ate our family meals. There are bedrooms where we read nighttime stories and said our prayers. There is the dining room table where we shared special Thanksgiving and Christmas meals with extended family. There are the bathrooms and kitchen, which he rebuilt from scratch when we first moved here 20 years ago. There is the backyard where I planted raspberries, asparagus and my cherished hosta gardens. It’s the same place he built a paver patio and walking path. The backyard was our project. It was our haven. One of them, at least. I need to move forward. He’ll come with me, I know that to my core. The house is just a house. Still, I’ll have to say goodbye to it. I have to say goodbye to a lot of things; I already have. But there is more to do. More goodbyes to accomplish. I hate each one, but it is inevitable. It has to be done. So on I go. Jill Pertler is an award-winning syndicated columnist, published playwright, author and member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Don’t miss a slice; follow the Slices of Life page on Facebook.
Survey shows almost 2/3 Illinoisans favor ‘immunity passports’ MyBioSource.com, a biotechnical products distribution company, recently conducted a survey -of 3,000 people to take the pulse of the nation on the topic of “immunity passports,” that is, a document issued as proof that the person has received the COVID-19 vaccine. The survey found that the opinions were quite divided – overall, 60% of Illinoisans believe immunity passports, compared to a national average of 59%. The research also found that nearly 1 in 3 (30%) people believe there should be an interstate travel ban for people who have not had their COVID-19 vaccine. Some countries have had immunization certificate requirements in place for a number of years for foreign travelers, to prevent the spread of diseases such as yellow fever and polio. Moreover, 60% of people think professional sports teams should give preference to ticketholders who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. This follows the announcement that this year, the Super Bowl gave away 7,500 free tickets to healthcare workers who had received both doses of the vaccine, to attend the game on Feb. 7.
How Illinois can jumpstart a heartland manufacturing revival By Jim Nowlan The stars are aligned for Illinois to become a hot spot in the revival of manufacturing across our great American heartland. For example, I propose a really big, transformative, federal-state-private-sector partnership that would create a cutting-edge, computer chip manufacturing and research facility on Arsenal Island, which straddles the Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities. “But how are the stars aligned, Jim?” you might ask. I respond: The Biden infrastructure plan includes $50 billion or more for a desperately needed American manufacturing and research renaissance. Illinois is a natural place for such a rebirth. We have in the University of Illinois, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and other research centers probably the greatest concentration of engineering and computer science firepower of any state, with perhaps the exception of Massachusetts and California. As the heart of the once-proud manufacturing heartland, now called a Rust Belt, we still have a strong tradition of workforce excellence. Further, Illinois has been an embarrassing laggard overall in economic growth; our population has been declining. Additionally, Illinois is a blue-blue state, with powerful blue elected officials in U.S. Senate Whip Dick Durbin, vice presidential candidate runner-up Sen. Tammy Duckworth, and a House Dem top player in Congresswoman Cheri Bustos. Duckworth will want to be re-elected next year, but Bustos announced April 30 that she will not be running in
2022. Why allocate really big manufacturing and research dollars in RED states, where most private investment has been going? Illinois has all the pieces in place. It is a natural. So, here in a nutshell is my proposal for the Quad Cities (QC), which my district neighbored when I was in the Illinois House decades ago. QC leaders have been in discussion with the flagship University of Illinois to come to town, and the university is interested. The U. of I. at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is home to one of the world’s leading computer science and electrical engineering campuses. For example, UIUC annually wins more National Science Foundation grant dollars than any university campus in the nation. And UIUC engineers and scientists are at the forefront of computer chip design. John Deere, and Caterpillar down the road in Peoria, need both licensed engineers and engineer technicians. And America badly needs to catch up in the computer chip design and manufacturing competition. Our nation has outsourced this function, and now wonders why, and of what we can do about it. The U. of I. already has collaborative engineering programs with community colleges. Students start at the community colleges and have the opportunity to move on to the four-year bachelor’s program in engineering at UIUC. In Black Hawk College, the QC has one of the oldest and most solid community colleges in the nation. Black Hawk and UIUC could use the existing collaboration model, locating a new UIUC junior-senior engineer program in the Quad Cities. The Rock Island Arsenal is also a big player in the QC. Since the Civil War, the Army has operated a
munitions manufacturing plant on the two-square-mile Arsenal Island that lies, literally, in the middle of the Mississippi River, between Illinois and Iowa. But employment at the Arsenal has dwindled from a high of 13,000 to about 5,500, and the future of America’s defense is no longer in bombs. Leaders at the Arsenal and in the QC understand this. They have the space, and are looking for new missions before the facility might one day easily be absorbed into other, much larger Department of Defense operations. The future of America’s defense lies in ever more sophisticated computer chips to guide and operate Star Warslevel defense programs. Indeed, Sen. Durbin and Congresswoman Bustos were critical several years ago in establishing the Army’s Center of Excellence for Additive and Advanced Manufacturing and the Quad City Manufacturing Laboratory at the Rock Island Arsenal. It’s time to leverage these leading-edge assets. It all makes so much sense. But elected officials like Durbin and Bustos need proposals that are near “shovel ready.” They are too busy to come to you; you have to give them something to run with. Your metro area may, indeed should, also have ideas for similar projects. Hop to it. Time is of the essence. Claimants are already lining up around Lafayette Square, in front of the White House, to make their pitches for more than their share of the Biden largesse. Making Illinois a world leader in chip production and research could be a game-changer. For many years, Jim Nowlan was a senior fellow and political science professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He was a state representative, worked for three governors and publishes a weekly newspaper in central Illinois.
