I have never really been able to grow my facial hair out fully. In my 20s, if I shaved on Monday, I would not get 5 o’clock shadow until about noon on Thursday.  Later in my 30s, the stubble showed up sooner, but it was still like nothing, nothing, nothing, then boom: 5 o’clock shadow that looked like I hadn’t shaved in a week.

I never minded because I’m not a beard, mustache, or goatee person. I know younger guys in leadership roles try to grow their beards to look older (think NFL Quarterbacks) and some guys see facial hair as a symbol of manhood.  I never gave any fucks about that.  The only time it really mattered was one October I wanted to grow some facial hair to augment my Halloween costume: Qui-Gon Jinn.

During this lockdown, shelter in place, self-quarantine, whatever we’re calling it, I decided to see what happens if I let it grow out. I was already putting off shaving in order to keep my blade supply alive. So I decided to see if I could look like Tony Stark.

No luck on the Iron Man alter ego.  Naturally, I consulted the wisdom of my Facebook friends and the results were an even mixture of Yes, No and Do What Makes You Happy.  Some guys look great with facial hair, completely transforming their look.  I’m not really one of those guys.

I think it has taken me two weeks to get to just this point and I’m not really loving it.  It feels funny to have hair on my face and it’s kinda scratchy.  I turn 51 next week and to commemorate, I’m gonna shave it off.

Stay tuned.

****************

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Working from home has quickly become much more common for employees of all kinds. While you may think this makes homes more secure, it actually creates new security vulnerabilities.

At your work, you coordinate with team members on the same network, often using company devices and the support of an IT team. At home, you don’t have the same protections. Hackers know this — which is part of why there’s been such an uptick in cyber attacks over the past few months.

If you want to keep your home secure while you work from home, there are some best practices you’ll want to follow.

Protecting Your Home Network

Install antivirus software if you don’t have one already. Use a VPN to connect to your company’s network, especially if you’re handling sensitive data or connecting to a Wi-Fi network that doesn’t belong to you. If you have control over your system, make sure you’ve changed your router password from the default. Otherwise, it may be easier for hackers to access your device, letting them intercept your data.

If possible, use corporate tools for communicating with co-workers and clients, rather than personal ones. You may have an IT team that is responsible for securing your company’s network, but personal tools — like a Google Drive — don’t necessarily have the same security. If your business has provided you with a secure option for connecting to your team and the company network — like a VPN or secure communication platform — use it whenever you’re handling sensitive, work-related data.

Continue to perform good security hygiene. Use strong passwords, avoid clicking suspicious links and lock your device if you walk away. If you can, keep separate gadgets for work and personal use.

Making regular backups of data is also a good idea. Cyber attackers can destroy or corrupt information when they breach a network. Having a backup in place ensures that you can keep working, even if you lose local copies of important files.

Keeping Your Home Secure

You also should consider the physical security of your home. While crimes are down in most places due to COVID-19, in some areas — like New York — there have been spikes in major crime rates. If you have a home security system, keep it active, even if you’re inside for most of the day. You should also check that all entrances to your property are secure, including your garage door, which is often less protected than other home entrances.

Identifying Common Scams

During any crisis, hackers are quick to invent new schemes that take advantage of the chaos. You may know how to recognize a phish, but hackers prey on confusion and are continually updating their approach. As you work from home, keep on top of the news and see how hackers are creating new versions of old scams — like phishing attacks — to take advantage of the chaos.

Staying Secure While Working From Home

Whether you’ve just started working from home or are a remote veteran, there are steps you can take to make your property more secure. Following security best practices — keeping strong passwords, updating your antivirus software and using a VPN — can help significantly. You’ll also want to stay on top of security news and keep up to date on new kinds of cyber-attacks and scams.

With most sports around the world on pause, revisit iconic sports moments from the past to help fill that void.

Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan crossed paths long ago. During Bryant’s ascension into one of the best basketball players ever, the two became even more similar.

The late Bryant will make an appearance on this weekend’s episodes of “The Last Dance” — bringing the two legends together again.

On Feb. 27, 2012, Bryant passed Michael Jordan for most points scored in NBA All-Star Game history.

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It was two weeks ago yesterday. Fifteen days ago. April 16, 2020. At one of of his usually loony coronavirus update press briefings, Donald Trump showed the people and states of America what they needed to do so they could safely reopen for business. It was a three part plan that even with Trump explaining it, sounded sane. It was something our country needed.

It lasted less than one entire day!

Remember the following day when Trump went on a Twitter spree? Yeah, I know, that’s every day, but that Friday was special.

LIBERATE!!!

Yep, that was the word our leader used to try to get the country moving again. So much for safety. So much for sanity.

One state took him at his one word. Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp liberated spas, tattoo parlors, beauty salons and bowling alleys. Sure, the virus is spreading there like a California wildfire, but liberate the people who need a haircut and some ink.

By the end of next week, most states will be at least partially reopening. Yeah, there are a lot of restrictions, but the Governors want to put their people back to work. Some do it save their economy. Others like the Governors in Iowa and Nebraska want to get their residents off of the unemployment rolls, even at the cost of more illness and death.

However, not one state has achieved level one of the president’s guidelines for  opening a state. NOT A SINGLE ONE!!

Stage one was easy to understand. You needed to have fourteen consecutive days of decreased cases of coronavirus. No one in the USA has reached that. In fact, most states are showing increased cases.

All of this concerns Dr. Anthony Fauci. He’s concerned that if we go too far too soon, we’ll take a step or more backwards and the number of cases will spike, as will the death toll. In an interview with the Today show, he urged states to move slow.

“We will get blips…there’s no doubt. When you pull back there will be cases, and what we need to do is make sure states have the capability of identifying, isolating and contact tracing individuals. You can’t just leap over things and get into a situation where you’re really tempting a rebound. That’s the thing I get concerned about.”

Hmmm…he doesn’t sound all that optimistic, does he? Certainly not as much as Jared Kushner, who predicted that by July the country will be “really rocking again.” Certainly not as much as Jared’s father-in-law, who envisions full stadiums and packed restaurants, sooner than later.

Listen, I’m all for getting us moving again. I realize how exhausting it is to be in a quarantined state. I empathize with the millions of jobless Americans, who desperately need to get back to work to keep their families afloat. I’m ready for the United States to be really rocking again! But it has to be done in a safe manner. We can not put people at risk to do this. I certainly am not willing to have anyone risk anything so Donald Trump can say he saved the country’s economy and campaign for a second term on that….not a chance in Hell!

So Don….I do have one single question for you? What did happen to those guidelines for reopening the country?

Related Post: Jared Kushner thinks 60,000 dead Americans is a success story

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Sad news out of Highland Park this morning. Ravinia has canceled its entire 2020 season due to the Covid pandemic.

The festival which is a rite of summer for thousands has operated continually since its 1904 opening except for 1932–1935, when the park was silenced by the Great Depression.

Ravinia made the decision to cancel the entire season, that was set to run from June 12 through September 16, unlike the approach that the City of Chicago has been taking whereas canceling early summer festivals such as Gospel Fest and Blues Fest while holding out hope for other festivals coming in July, August and September.

Anyone who purchased tickets can receive refunds or vouchers for future performances, or they can convert those funds into tax-deductible donations.

Ravinia explained its decision in a release sent to the media saying the decision was made to protect health and safety of Ravinia’s audiences, artists, staff, and neighbors during what they called a national calamity.

Here’s the release:

HIGHLAND PARK, IL – In response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Ravinia, the oldest music festival in the country, has been forced to cancel its 2020 season. Ravinia has operated continually since its 1904 opening except for 1932–1935, when the park was silenced by the Great Depression. The not-for-profit festival was to have presented more than 120 events from June 12 through September 16, including the annual summer residency of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The festival’s summer conservatory, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, will also be closed this summer.

Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman, who late last year announced that 2020 would be his final season at the helm, explained that factors driving this decision prioritized the health and safety of Ravinia’s artists, audiences, staff, and neighbors, and follows similar cancellations of other summer festivals, along with their training programs.

Since February, Ravinia has been working with its guest artists—some of whom have already canceled their entire 2020 summer tours—to determine how best to proceed, including opportunities to rebook these performers into future seasons. Ravinia’s leadership has also been closely monitoring the evolving warnings of local, state, and national authorities to avoid large gatherings.

“Ravinia benefits from an informed and responsible Board of Trustees and engaged family of volunteers, and our lengthy and thorough discourse on this topic has brought us to the conclusion that it is impossible to move ahead with the season,” Kauffman said.

Anyone who purchased tickets can receive refunds or vouchers for future performances, or they can convert those funds into much-needed tax-deductible donations.

In addition to online concert footage and interviews in support of the May 15 national PBS broadcast premiere of Bernstein’s Mass filmed last summer, Kauffman emphasized that he and the Ravinia staff are developing ideas to give the festival a “from home” presence across social platforms, including “virtual” opportunities for lectures, master classes, and rehearsals for the Lake and Cook County elementary school students who participate in Reach Teach Play, as well as for the young professionals who won acceptance to RSMI this year.

“The lives of these young students have been thrown in total disarray, so it is important that Ravinia helps where it can to provide the structure of these virtual classrooms. Our programs give young people a means of expression and connection with each other and their own quarantined families. We teach them that music is their superpower, and what better time than now to have a superpower?” Kauffman said.

“The crisis created by the Covid pandemic has impacted so much of our lives in dramatic ways. Ravinia will do its part in helping the nation recover,” said Ravinia Board Chairman Don Civgin, “and we will celebrate that recovery with music under the stars next summer.”

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The XFL didn’t make it through its reboot season, but could its legacy live on in college football?

The league officially ceased operations April 10; some would say by falling TV ratings while others would argue it was a victim of the coronavirus pandemic. No matter the reason, the XFL may have provided the NCAA with a model to alter its own rules to provide for a safer, yet still exciting kickoff.

According to its own guidelines, XFL kickoffs featured the place-kicker alone at his own 30-yard line, from where touchbacks are less likely. The coverage and blocking teams line up across from each other between the returning team’s 30- and 35-yard lines, an alignment that minimizes high-speed collisions. The average drive after a kickoff return has started at the 30-yard line, five yards ahead of the 2019 NFL average.

A February ESPN story by Kevin Seifert noted the effort to increase the number of kickoff and punt returns, compared to recent NFL averages, had been largely successful.

Through the first eight games of the XFL’s 40-game season, 90.1% of kickoffs and 63.4% of punts were returned. Last season in the NFL, 34.1% of kickoffs and 36.2% of punts were returned.

While those numbers are arguably a small sample size and the XFL folded just five weeks into its season, it certainly is food for thought for the NCAA rules committee.

Prairie State Pigskin sought the opinions of FCS coaches from around the state.

Adam Cushing, Eastern Illinois

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see continued alterations of the kickoff rules, especially for the health and safety of the game. The NFL has studied this in depth and there is a disproportionate number of injuries on kickoffs.  

“I can see in the next x number of years, certainly single digits, that you’ll see the rules committee take a really hard look and continue to make the game safer. At our head coaches’ meetings, they continue to talk about it. Last year they eliminated wedge blocks, so two-person, shoulder-to-shoulder double teams. This year they’re discussing, though nothing has gone through, eliminating all double teams (on kickoffs). I think we’re going to continue to see, in a very positive way, things get safer on that play. 

“Any time you can see a model that is in action and working, it’s going to be particularly salient to what we’re talking about. The XFL had to go out on a limb to make up the rule, but college football has the opportunity to look at it and say, ‘boy, look at the statistics there.’ I think it has the chance to be really causative. 

“It’s an interesting discussion. We could sit here and talk about it for quite awhile . . . while that becomes safer for the guy covering kicks, it’s now alternatively not as safe for the guy catching the kick because he has less protection from the (coverage) player running full speed. 

“Is the XFL model the right one? It will be interesting to see statistics at year’s end on injuries with that play. It’s an alternative moving forward. It’s not just the guys covering the kick, it’s everybody in general. Sometimes the unintended consequences for a rule change are good for Team A, but what about Team B?”

Jared Elliott, Western Illinois

“When you look at just the last five years, there’s been so much change, almost annually with kickoffs. The wedge was eliminated. They’re constantly exploring the different ways that we can make that play in football safer but yet still be exciting and not take away from the tradition of the game. 

“There’s no question that that one play in football is the play that can cause the most physical and violent collisions. You’ve got two opposite players running full speed with a great distance and green grass between them. They’re building up a lot of force and power.

“What the XFL did set another lightbulb off for a lot of people. This is a creative way to still keep the tradition of the game, the importance of that play in terms of field position and trying to find ways of creating explosion on special teams and the strategy behind it. This [XFL] model maintains that and is also creating a much safer play. 

“I do think it will be looked at. I have not seen anything come across yet from our league that it’s being considered, but I do think it’s made a lot of people think about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see that trickle down to college football at some point. 

“Personally, I thought it was a great idea. It’s still a fun play to watch, it’s unique and there’s still strategy involved. I even saw St. Louis return one for a touchdown, so it’s not a play that favors one side or the other. It’s still a fun and very critical play of a game. But it creates a much safer situation for the players.”

Brock Spack, Illinois State

“I liked it. I really, really liked it. After seeing it the first week [of the XFL], I told my staff that I could really see this being adapted in college football. That’s probably one of the most dangerous plays in football. I’d like to see what their [XFL] injury rate was. 

“We kind of practice the kickoff that way. Sometimes we don’t run through the kickoff completely. We work on those different phases so we don’t run 60 yards and have those big collisions. Obviously there are points during preseason where you have to work on it live and cross your fingers [that no one gets hurt]. 

“I thought it had some merit. Our staff thought it was pretty cool. As the [XFL] weeks went by, I watched how people were attacking the coverage. What kind of blocking schemes they could use within that alignment. It looked to me like running inside or outside zones on offense, the leverages people were using. How far you had to reach. It was very interesting. I could absolutely see college football wanting something like that.”

Khenon Hall, ISU running backs coach

“I think it would be good for our level. With all the rules in place right now, it would be good to go to that format. It would definitely save some hits and stay with [the] safety first [concept].

“I think it’s gonna happen, I don’t know when, but I think it’s going to happen. With this time off, that’s more time for them [rules committee] to look at it. . . I like it. It’s still entertaining, but with the safety factor, it’s better for football.”

The Bears and the NFL have released face covering aimed to help people avoid coronavirus.

Order yours here.

Additionally, the NFL and FOCO will support the CDC Foundation by donating all NFL proceeds from the sale of these licensed face coverings.

Tribune Publishing may earn a commission if you purchase a product through one of our links.

Joe Biden indeed said it ain’t so, with the same conviction and instensity as when then-President Bill Clinton fibbed that, “I did not have sex with that woman…Monica Lewinsky.”

Which is to say that a denial, no matter how strenuously made, is only the start. As when Chicago Daily News reporter Charley Owens said,”Say it ain’t so, Joe” about “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, a star outfielder for the Chicago White Sox who was accused of helping throw the 1919 World Series as part of the “Black Sox” scandal. It was, when the evidence was in, so.

Biden poured forth his denials during an interview on MSNBC, the Democrat version of Fox News. Consider it to be Biden’s arraignment. Judgment to be made after all the evidence is in.

The former vice president and assumed Democratic presidential candidate firmly and repeatedly denied that he sexually assaulted his former aide Tara Reade. She said on a podcast that Biden had pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt and pushed his fingers inside her when she was a 29-year-old staff assistant 27 years ago.

It doesn’t matter how well Biden performed in the interview. Or what the instant, favorable analysis said, as did the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin when she wrote tout de suite after the interview ended in “What Joe Biden did right in rebutting Tara Reade’s claims,” 

Biden invited a thorough investigation but in the same appearance threw a wrench into it. He has or will ask the National Archives to search the records for documentation that Reade filed a contemporary complaint about the incident. That’s where any written evidence of a complaint would be found, he insisted, asserting that nothing will be found.

What he won’t open up are his Senate papers housed at the University of Delaware. He argued that no one should even look through the papers to find if Reade’s name is there. That would protect Biden’s claim that classified or secret information in the archives means that they can’t be opened. The university says they can’t be opened until two years after he retires from public service.

Reade’s integrity can be questioned, despite what the #MeToo movement said during the Kavanaugh hearings. At the same time, she should be given the respect she deserves, despite what the partisan’s have already irresponsibly declared her to be a fraud.

Even Biden said that the facts must be followed, even though he has already declared the facts say he is innocent.

So, let the search begin.

[email protected]

www.dennisbyrne.net 

My historical novel: Madness: The War of 1812

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