Dylan Yoder
Columnist
Well, it’s officially been one month since 2022. To be completely honest with you a lot I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It hasn’t been a bad first month but many interesting things have developed over the beginning of 2022. Namely, the rising tensions in Ukraine, the Omicron variant, and world politics as a whole. In this region specifically, the weather has been exceptionally bizarre over the past few weeks. But if you’ve lived here for quite some time you know as well as I that inconsistent weather is to be expected. With that being said, let’s take a look at some of the wackiest turns of events so far this year.
Starting off with the most publicized piece of news as of late, the Ukrainian/Russian tensions. If you’re like me, you woke up one day and spontaneously heard that Russia was massing troops near their western border. It was then that I realized how out of touch I was with the news of the rest of the world. As I wasn’t aware of any rising conflict between those two nations before, yet here we are. Apparently, tensions began rising once Russia was found to be moving troops near the border. Russian President Zelenskiy confirmed that he gave the order “not because we will soon have a war… but so that soon and in the future, there will be peace in Ukraine.” Take that as you will, soon thereafter, the USA demanded immediate Russian de-escalation in the region, as diplomats scramble to make peace before any kind of conflict breaks out. We’ll see how this story develops in the near future.
This piece of weird news hits a little bit closer to home as residents around the Kansas City area looked to the skies several days ago and saw what appeared to be a swirling light in the skies. It is not in fact the end of time, rather, meteorologists explained it to most likely be a result of a fuel dump from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 as it moved into a new stage of its flight. The image that people took of the spectacle is quite interesting.
Have you ever had a library book past its due date? Well, chances are you can’t beat the record that a small library in Boise, Idaho recently attained. A book titled “The New Chronicles of Rebecca” was recently found by a resident that had a last checkout date of Nov. 8, 1911. And I thought I was a slow reader… Regardless, the book was returned to the library in decent condition, and no late fee was charged on the book. Good news for the one who checked it out, as the late fee would’ve come up to nearly 800$.
Those aren’t the only pieces of wacky news from recent times either. Every day more and more bizarre things happen in our world and we can only wonder why. To be honest with you, wackiness is what makes life interesting. That is when it doesn’t harm us or put us into difficult situations, (“cough cough” Russia). Uncontrollable, weird things happen to us every day, it’s important not to get bogged down by those things, but to roll with the punches so to speak. Between COVID, international tensions, and everything else, there can be a lot of stressful things in our lives. Not to mention the incredible impracticality of weather our region is experiencing. However, we’ve been through worse before. Our world will always be wacky and weird, it’s up to us what to make of it.
