Power of a cell phone, European elections, and food deserts

A few things grabbed my interest this week. The McCook School Board’s approval of a policy that bans cell phone use in classrooms caught my eye. I no longer have kids in high school, but as an employer of people who are younger than I am (most people are), I have noticed a couple of distinct cell phone characteristics among the youngest of them.

First, some have very limited boundaries regarding cell phone use. Text messaging and social media stoke personal dramas that too easily eclipse job-related responsibilities, and I have been forced to restrict phone use when I would prefer to trust personal judgment. To that extent, I understand why adopting the policy was necessary for the schools, and at the same time, I know it’s not a decision that is easily made.

My second observation is that those same young people seemed unaware of the power they held in their hands. They didn’t understand that all of life’s little questions that arise in the course of a day are there to be answered (with requisite fact-checking).

Why do stars “twinkle?” How many ounces of liquid are in a two-liter bottle? What causes different colors in flames? Why do dogs wag their tails? Or, were designers of the U.S. Constitution informed by the governmental structure of the Iroquois Confederacy?

We are privileged to live in a time when we can carry the world's wisdom in our shirt pockets. I hope our schools don’t let students graduate without appreciating that ability.

I have also been eyeing the elections in Europe. Like us, voters in the U.K. and France are now in the throes of an election cycle, and the consequences of the outcomes are considerable.

In France, voters will return to the isoloir for snap elections on June 30, then again on July 7 (second-round voting when no clear majority emerges). For the first time since WWII, polls indicate that the far right could win, with a left-wing coalition expected to secure the second-largest number of seats and President Emmanuel Macron's centrist alliance projected to come in third.

On the other side of the Channel, Prime Minister Sunak has asked the King to dissolve Parlement, and an election has been called for July 4. With the familiar themes of post-COVID inflation, immigration, healthcare, and energy prices looming as primary voter interests, the Labour Party under Keir Starmer is expected to defeat the Tory government by a comfortable margin.

Why should we care? In Britain, Labour is expected to support both the defense of Ukraine and the continued pursuit of Hamas in Gaza. In France, the far right has extreme views that include reducing support of NATO and increasing diplomatic ties with Russia, but support for or against Israel is less uniform. Bottom line: Changing leadership in Europe will affect the coalitions behind the defense of both Ukraine and Israel, affecting both NATO and EU policy.

Last, I received an invitation from the Center for Rural Affairs to complete a “Grocery Store Impact Survey.” The stated purpose was to “evaluate the accessibility of healthy food in Nebraska” and the role of grocery stores in Nebraska communities. The effort is more or less associated with the Nebraska Legislature’s LR 374, which calls for an interim study to ”Examine the availability of healthy and affordable food choices in Nebraska communities.” LR 374 addresses “food insecurity,” but it is, as much as anything, an economic development issue.

While McCook is in no immediate danger of becoming a food desert, the fate of our grocery stores remains a near-and-dear subject to many of us. We have all heard the death knell for our smaller, surrounding communities as the local grocer closed its doors.

When I arrived in McCook thirty years ago, we had a Hinky Dinky (I still love the name), U-Save (the grocery store), and independent meat and vegetable markets. We even had a white-label discount grocer for a brief period in the Hinky Dinky-Nash Finch transition.

We have now lost most of that, with the regional Gary’s grocery as the last standing and the rest supplanted by a dollar store and an under-appreciated farmer’s market. Those of us who do not shop at the community-crushing box store realize that we are only one or two choices away from having no choice at all.

Let’s keep an eye on LR 374 in the next session, hoping that a raised awareness of the importance of local grocers may counter a one-sided media presence and remind us to shop local.