Longtime readers know I don’t wade into politics in this column. I let others do the dirty work of calling out corruption, explaining political policy and making fun of Joe Biden. Me? I stick to vital topics like cats, kids and underwear. But I’m writing this on Tuesday morning and the federal government has just plunged into a partial shutdown. I fully expect Congress and the president to have resolved their differences by the time you read this, but then again I fully expected all of my sons to be potty-trained by age 2. That didn’t happen. While I understand the seriousness of approximately 800,000 federal employees being out of work for a few hours or several days, the hysterical hyperbole of political pundits left me unfazed. That is until this morning when I turned on my computer and discovered the Panda Cam at the National Zoo had been turned off. They shut down the Panda Cam! As my teenagers say, “Stuff just got real.” (Well that’s not exactly what they say, but this is a family-friendly newspaper)/Cindy Hval, SR Front Porch. More here.

Question: If you were king/queen of the universe, how would you resolve the shutdown?