Opinion

The Canadian Record staff is committed to continuing to deliver the news you need in a timely manner. The coronavirus pandemic has caused great disruption in the ways we connect and in how we conduct business.

THIS IS THE CALM before the storm. We are on Day 20 since the area’s first case of COVID-19. Our emergency department has been working diligently, attempting to get into a new routine.

DISASTERS ALWAYS TEST LEADERS, but a pandemic isn’t a hurricane or a tornado. It doesn’t come and go in a day or a week. It’s not confined to a geographic area. It’s invisible. It preys on the social ties that bind us into communities, cities, a state.

LAST WEEK’S COVER PHOTO, which featured the Palace Theatre sign announcing its temporary closing, pretty much encapsulated the bad news we have been covering for the last month, and which we continue to report in this edition.

JUNIOR HIGH AND PUBLIC MEETINGS—yes, they are related. Remember back in junior high when you didn’t get that invite to a party that you wanted to attend, and when the kids who were invited came to school the next day, it was all they could talk about?

TO OUR READERS: News of the coronavirus pandemic is evolving quickly—on the national, state, and local level. The Canadian Record is making every effort to inform the community of breaking news, and to alert Canadian and Hemphill County residents to the latest information, as it is released.

The Texas Open Meetings Act is a statute found in Chapter 551 of the Government Code.

TEXANS HAVE SOMETHING to celebrate during Sunshine Week this year. But we also have more work to do to protect the public’s right to know about our government.