Opinion

More than 5 million acres have burned in wildfires on the West Coast. Thousands of structures have been destroyed and tens of thousands of residents of Oregon, California, and Washington have been displaced. At least 27 have died, with more still missing, and the fires continue to spread. In Idaho, today, hundreds of firefighters are battling more than a dozen fires, relying on regional and state firefighting resources that are already stretched too thin.

WE WERE REMINDED, this week, of the true purpose of Labor Day—to pay tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers. While the rest of us were settling in for a quiet three-day weekend, our city’s street and water department crews were called to work early Saturday morning.

THOSE NUMBERS ARE PEOPLE. It’s easy to forget, when you’re taking a daily look at a dashboard tracking the coronavirus, at the closed businesses and unemployed workers across the state that mark the path of the recession, at efforts to educate Texas kids in classrooms or in their homes, or at the logistics of breaking the social distancing blues with some college football.

“Teachers are writing wills.” That was the headline that stopped me in my tracks one day in the midst of preparing for our back-to-school coverage and the Pigskin Preview edition. Stopped me cold. Said “Go no farther until you have considered what this means.”

WE WANTED HAIRCUTS. Now we want football.