Laurels & lances: Clean, delay, warn
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Laurel: To two birds with one stone. It is great when people are able to lend a hand for a good cause. When you can do two at the same time, it’s even better.
Plum Borough observed Earth Day on April 24 with a Cleanup Day event as the culmination of a whole week of volunteer opportunities. Donna and Dan Kane signed up for help at their Short Street home, where the yard was still messed up from July 2019 flooding that the senior couple was just not capable of fixing.
But several employees of Olympus Energy, a natural gas company that has a well drilling pad in the borough, could. So they pulled together to get the Kanes’ yard cleaned up.
“It’s something that I’m passionate about, being able to help elderly or those in need,” said Manny Johnson, the company’s vice president of operations.
There may be no better way to celebrate conservation than by helping people improve the environment in their own backyard.
Lance: To one more time. The Department of Homeland Security has once more extended the date for requiring a Real ID for air travel or accessing federal buildings, moving the deadline from Oct. 1, 2021 to May 3, 2023.
The second delay since March 2020, it was also made in response to covid complicating the work of driver’s licensing authorities. While a global pandemic is definitely a good reason for flexibility in a lot of things, it doesn’t change the fact that this is just the most recent in a series of delays, in the before times.
The Real ID football has been kicked further and further down the field for years. The federal act that authorized it was passed in 2005.
These more-verified identification cards are intended to make access to these restricted areas safer. But if the government wants people to upgrade their common forms of state-issued identification, it needs to stop changing the timeline.
Laurel: To demonstrating dangers. While proms are an annual rite of passage, so are the warnings that can come with them — warnings about the unintended but predictable consequences of risky behavior.
Hempfield Area High School was the scene of one of those warnings as students — with assistance of Greensburg-based Mutual Aid Ambulance Service, alongside engines from Fort Allen, Hempfield #2 and Adamsburg fire stations — staged a mock accident.
The message isn’t new. For decades, kids have been warned about the risks of drinking and driving — a deadly combination that seems all the more pernicious on a celebratory prom night. Now there is also the added danger of driving with the distraction of texting or other phone use.
These are the kind of displays that shouldn’t be necessary, but they are, and the people who make them happen save lives.