Once it was “white all right, brown stick around, black step back.” Now reverse that. Race-based casting either way.

God love a parade!

Sorrounding events.

Sin died a while back, and more’s the pity.

Sometime in the 1980s Catholic primary school teachers in Ireland abandoned the concept of sin, considering it too harsh for the six-year-olds they were training for the confessional. They reached instead for the phrase “a failure to love,” a devastating switch that moved children from the pleasures of transgression (who doesn’t like a good sin?) to the wilderness of abandonment. It was like accusing them of causing their own loneliness.

From Dublin-based writer Anne Enright.

Come up with the right conclusions, Buddy, or forget about your damn research.

I’m impressed with the peaceful part. You never know these days. . . .

. . . significant that they specify peaceful. Shows they are woke to that issue like the rest of us.

Later: They walked by an hour or so ago, a model of decorum, a nice show of support.

Stuff makes you wonder.

Many reports refer to the newly identified coronavirus in Wuhan, China, as a “mystery” virus. Is it really a mystery? Do masks help keep you from getting infected?

These are some of the questions circulating about the virus called 2019-nCoV. Here are some answers.

Will a mask protect me? There’s a run on masks in China, with the belief that wearing one in public will protect an individual from exposure to droplets sneezed or coughed out by someone infected with the Wuhan virus.

But there’s little evidence to suggest that the face masks worn by members of the public prevent people from being infected by breathing in the virus, says William Schaffner, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “There really are no good, solid, reliable data.”

According to the CDC, the kind of flimsy masks that people often buy in pharmacies may not tightly fit the face, so the wearer can still breathe in air — and infected droplets.

Stanley Perlman, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies coronaviruses, agrees that the mask won’t necessarily prevent infection. But they do have some value, he says: Wearing a mask may stop an individual from directly touching their mouth and nose, which is a common way that viruses and germs enter the body. Masks provide some protection this way, he adds. “But what we teach is that they’re not very good.”

So why bother?Well, and this is not too much to ask, wash your hands.

But there is one thing that experts endorse as a preventive: “Hand hygiene is the answer,” Schaffner says, suggesting soap and water, since the abrasiveness of soap helps remove infectious particles from the hands. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends scrubbing your hands for at least 20 seconds. Make sure to clean the backs of your hands, between your fingers and under your nails, advises the CDC. And scrub for 20 seconds — about as long as it takes to sing, at a moderate pace, the alphabet song.

Let’s see. How does that go? I’ll ask my friend Joe, age 5, and maybe, I say maybe, my other friend Simon, age 2 1/2.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

International poverty charity Oxfam warned in a report this week that the number of deaths caused by famine as a result of worldwide lockdown measures could exceed those caused by the Chinese coronavirus, which triggered the lockdowns.

Oxfam, which is a confederation of 20 independent charitable organizations focused on alleviating global poverty, released a report on Thursday warning that “12,000 people per day could die from Covid-19 linked hunger by end of the year.”

Does Dr. Fauci know this? Or the dozens of other fixers with (not all) the answers?

Some record.

Well, if she couldn’t or wouldn’t stop the looting and destruction in the recent riots in black ‘hoods, the same goes for these shootings, which she made a key goal. The lady is dropping ball.

We don’t want no stinkin’ behavior code — sounds too restrictive. A behavior plan, that’s what we want. We can live with that!

There will be major changes in store for students and adults whenever they return to the classrooms and hallways of Oak Park and River Forest High School — particularly on how students are disciplined. But despite the District 200 administration’s overhauls, school board members are still not wholly convinced they will be enough to change OPRF’s longstanding culture of racism and inequity.

The most significant change involves the Student Code of Conduct. Starting this fall, it will have a new name — the Behavior Education Plan. The D200 school board approved the new plan at a special meeting on June 16.

Still there are worries that “the changes sufficiently addressed the biggest impediment to radically changing OPRF’s racial climate — the behaviors of the adults in the building.”