By Shereen Siewert, Wausau Pilot & Review Editor and Publisher

Happy Monday, readers. I hope you had a great week.

Right off the bat, let’s talk about graduation. We want to honor our area graduates, whether they’re graduating from high school, college, military training or technical college. Many ceremonies are postponed, but others are canceled altogether. These are milestones that deserve celebration. You may have already seen our graduate spotlights, short pieces we’ve been publishing over the past few days, and we’ll continue to publish them over the next few weeks. It’s not too late to be included, either. Here’s how to submit one for yourself or for a family member.

Shifting gears – it’s clear that much has changed since this time last week, as the Supreme Court decision that overturned Safer at Home. We’d like to know what that means to you. Have you reopened your business? Are you waiting for more direction? For non-business owners, have you resumed your normal activity? Ventured out and enjoyed a drink or a meal at a local establishment? If you’d like your comment to be included in a story we’re working on this week, email me at [email protected].

There are some interesting proposals being floated at City Hall this week, including potential changes to rules for restaurants serving alcohol and expanding outdoor dining options for some downtown establishments. Parks and recreation will meet today to talk about the pool situation, and whether it’s feasible to open one or more pools this summer. One sticking point is staffing, the other is related to pool capacity. We’ll report on those decisions as they’re made.

A lot is happening behind the scenes here, too, as we work to create a better experience for you, our readers. Our new website has already launched, which we are continuing to tweak as we go. We’ve also begun listing events, for free, on our events page, which is even easier to find in our app – there’s a tab at the bottom that you click on and – voila – everything you need to know about what’s happening is right at your fingertips. If you have a concert, fundraiser, festival, live music experience – whether virtual or in person – email the details to [email protected] and we’ll include it.

When our new app debuts (next month, we think), it will be even easier, and we’ll also be adding a self-serve option for you to enter your own event as we move forward.

Bottom line – you shouldn’t have to pick up a printed paper to figure out what to do this weekend. It should be at your fingertips, right?

Finally, we are incredibly grateful to have received six statewide awards from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association for work published in 2019. Those awards are normally announced in early March, but this year they waited until last week. As a small publication with a tiny staff, it’s incredibly gratifying to see our work getting noticed. And we congratulate all the incredible journalists in Wisconsin from publications both large and small who were chosen for these awards.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week.