By Nola Minogue ’21
This week, Mayor Mike Cahill of Beverly called in an interview with the Ledger, eager to answer the questions on students’ minds today.
Q. What have you learned from being a leader during these strange and difficult times?
I think everyone handles challenges and experiences stress differently, which I think we already know, but if you know, it starts to help. It starts to help me and my work to understand the people. I’m working with them and to know who handles what in what ways, and then I think of the importance of challenging yourself and the team that you’re working with every day. We have to challenge ourselves everyday. And then comes the kind of evolution of how we should be acting based on knowledge gained as you go along because there’s been a lot of that over the last month with this.
Q. What do you use as a way to decompress and keep your head focused during a stressful situation?
It (the virus) is pretty much every waking hour, and it’s 7 days a week, and if you’re not careful, it can kind of take off your sleeping hours too. There’s a lot of information to keep up with and it’s important for me to be able to cut a check in with the flow of that information every day and every evening, and at the same time it’s important to be able to unplug from it particularly when evening hits and you know you’re going to be trying to go to sleep in an hour or two. Unplugging and taking the pressure off to just unwind before trying to kind of close your eyes is important. We know for example that screen time right before sleeping generally makes it harder to get a good night sleep, and when your screen time it’s all about the pandemic and it’s right up until you close your eyes, that’s not really a good formula. So I’m trying to make sure that before I go to bed that I change the channel to something lighter, or I do a little bit of reading that doesn’t have to do with the pandemic. I do try to get out for a walk at least once. I find it very relaxing right now in the evening. I also try to make sure that I get time with family, and you know these days that it’s more electronically, and at a safe distance. So those are some of the things I think for most people it’s good to do, to be active. I’m a very active person.
Q. What do you think teenagers can take away from the response of our local government towards the outbreak?
We all make mistakes, but I do want to say that you should trust us as Beverly’s team today, you should be assured that there are a lot of really smart and talented and dedicated people in our community, whether officially or unofficially, are all kind of digging in and trying to get us through this, and do the things that need doing to protect people and care for people who need help. If you (teenagers) make the right decisions to help minimize for all of us the risk of contracting the virus and maximizing our ability to stay healthy, then it’s our turn to protect you. There will come a day when it’ll be you and your peers who will find themselves tested and challenged by a crisis and will be in the position that a lot of us are in now. We’re doing the very best that we know how
Q. What message would you give teenagers whose parents or grandparents have tested positive for Coronavirus?
We always as a community are keeping our thoughts and prayers with your family members. I’m trying to do all that we can to make sure that our Healthcare Professionals within the healthcare system have the ability to give your family members all the care they need and deserve. In a lot of ways, that has to do with slowing down the virus to not spread so quickly doctors and nurses and other health professionals in a hospital can keep up. If they can’t keep up then more people will die. It’s fair to say that a strong percentage of the transmissions of Covid-19 are by people who are not symptomatic. The fact that they’re contagious and they don’t know it, that’s where the importance of staying apart from each other and social distance is most important. We really need to stay away from each other. None of us asked for this, and for you and your peers it’s awful. Your natural desires are to be with your friends and to be growing and learning. But right now we’re learning something very different and the reality is that all of our lives are being changed by this. When we come out, it’s going to shape who we are as people and it’s going to shape us for the rest of our lives.
Q. TV show recommendations for teens stuck at home?
I think all of our teens should go to BevCam and watch me on the City Council scenes and watch our city counseling school committee. I’m kidding! I mean, it’s not an answer for fun shows, but there’s no harm in high schoolers taking an interest in how we’re addressing things; both kind of the new routine and the Covid-19 related stuff. I don’t even want to try to recommend a TV show because I don’t know what y’all are watching right now and enjoying. I do watch The Office. It’s a great cast and it’s pretty funny. I also like NCIS: Los Angeles and Chicago PD. I think there’s some fun escapist TV out there. There’s some really worthwhile programming out there. And I mean you can always watch Happy Gilmore for a cheer up.
The Ledger thanks Mayor Cahill for his time.
