New World in the Morning.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS - COVID-19

IF YOU ARE a woman over a certain age, it is expected that you become at least a little misty-eyed when listening to Roger Whit-taker's, "The Last Farewell." I am over a certain age and I always have found that song grating: a beautifully sung tale of a woman in every port, to my way of thinking. Why that would make me weepy and feel romantic one more time and not hurl the sea-faring bastard's baggage out the garret window, I am not sure.

No, the Whittaker song that is my "No. 1" would be "New World in the Morning," a melodious consideration at many people's endlessly postponing being alive, truly alive, until some never-never-land of "tomorrow" ... much like everyone who hit "pause" when COVID-19 struck and then let "pause" permeate every corner of life, including unnecessary ones. They overcomplied with COVID-19 "safer" at home mandates, back when flattening the curve was the target, and no one in the media yet was pretending that the goal was for no one to get sick, ever, ever again.

Around early September, the early morning sidewalks and roadways were as crowded with exercisers as any Jan. 2. It seemed as if people suddenly had woken up, shook off Sleeping Beauty somnolence, and realized that they had been eating in their sleep for six months. This is Florida--a place where staying indoors never was mandated. We did have a few weeks of imbecilic rules about being banned from the beach, followed by, "You can go to the beach but you can't sit down," followed by throwing up authoritarian arms and sighing, "Oh, heck, just try to behave yourselves, for crying out loud"--which is what we were, mostly, all pretty much doing all along.

Florida is similar to Ireland in this way: in neither place do people go along well with being bossed around. They will nod and smile and even buy you a drink, and then go off and do precisely what they want. Heck, in Florida we are lucky if we get people to brush off the sand before Mass, never mind change clothes, and we are glad they come to church. Even if we had been told to stay indoors, the streets likely would have been full--likewise, the beaches; surely you have seen news footage of endangered and giddily delighted Floridians surfing because they can. Only an impending tropical storm or hurricane gins up enough wave action for serious surfers.

So, given that Floridians are as they are--gloriously noncompliant with stupid rules as much as with some reasonable ones--it is disappointing that so many people...