December 2021

These past few years have been challenging, hard and, with the influx of the omicron variant this Christmas season, seemingly neverending. It’s been nearly two years since we began what was to have been a twoweek pause to stop COVID-19. Since then, we’ve endured lockdowns, masking, sickness, death, fear, overwork, underwork, government stimulus, vaccine creation, the fast-tracking of new antiviral technology, work from home, school closures, supply-chain snafus, tight political elections, protests and rapidly changing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just to name a few items. The list is ever-exhausting.

Monday, Jan. 3: Pork and beans Tuesday, Jan.

Tuesday, Jan. 4: Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, coleslaw, dessert Thursday, Jan.

Dec. 30—Five players scored in double figures Wednesday night, and the Oklahoma women’s basketball team coasted to an 89-67 win over Wichita State at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman.

Dec. 30—Federal regulators announced this past week a proposal to withdraw and reconsider a 2020 decision to extend Oklahoma’s authority to regulate environmental programs on tribal lands within the state.

NEW YEAR’S HOLIDAY OBSERVED The City of Ponca City will observe Friday, December 31, 2021 as a City Holiday: • Residential Refuse WILL NOT BE PICKED UP Friday, December 31, and will RESUME Monday, January 3. Contact Tim McNew, Solid Waste Superintendent, 767- 0411 • Ponca City Landfill will be CLOSED Friday, December 31, and REOPEN Saturday, January 1.

Dec. 30—SAN ANTONIO — About an hour before the Alamo Bowl kicked off, Bob Stoops came strolling out of the tunnel and the ovation rose.

On New Year’s Eve, when I was a kid, at the stroke of midnight we would run outside and bang pots and pans with a wooden spoon to ring in the new year. Those were the modest homemade noisemakers of our small Kentucky town. As a teen, I would dream of being among the crowd in New York City when the ball dropped. I declared that’s where I’d be for the year 2000. I wasn’t. I was 25 years old and pregnant with my daughter. I slept right through it. Staying up until midnight had lost its novelty.