Sunday, December 13, 2020 Vaccine In Sight!!!
Oh that we could have hibernated for the year and woken up to a world with a vaccine and a hope for a better future for 2021.
Never never never did we ever expect that....
- We would be so grateful to be able to shelter in place for 300 days, and still keep our jobs, and having gone this far without having caught COVID-19
- We would go for more than a year without seeing our LI O'Hara/Bordt family, or our Miami/Ohio Blatchly siblings.
- We would spend the year essentially without our children - we did have a way too brief few weeks with Becca, Sarah and Julia at Owasco Lake in August and - not that I'm counting, but that is approximately 4% of the year spent together, or more poignantly, 96% spent apart.
- We would lose beloved extended family and friends to terrible illnesses and to old age, and not be able to grieve them properly.
- We would teach for several semesters online - rarely ever or in Rich's case never having met our students in person face to face.
- Our family members would lose jobs, get jobs, and then lose them again due to the pandemic.
- We would have to transition to singing in a virtual choir
- Pat would optimistically start a COVID COUNTDOWN blog - but loose steam after day 72.
- Pat would (like so many of you) start baking bread - giving up after 3 weeks on her sourdough starter - but creating many other delicious loaves - Saturday break, Molasses Rye.
-
take advantage of a buy-out option for Rich to retire early from Keene State College - without any of the fanfare, dinners, and speeches one associates with retiring from a 35-year career.
- We would celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary by ourselves - zooming with many well wishers and friends, but unable to share our joy in person.
- We would cancel trips to Maryland, Long Island, Denver and our long awaited second honey moon to Hawaii.
- Rich would start "howling" with our neighbor, Eddie Mientka - every night at 8 PM on April 2, and having an almost unbroken record to today.
- the Turkish translation of our book, "The Chemical Story of Olive Oil", released in March, would get enthusiastic reception - have a promotional video - and go to a second printing in October.
- We would have our national original sin of racism exposed so viscerally with the death of George Floyd and see our nation torn apart with nerve gas, national guardsmen in riot gear and global protests
