Altamont Library Notes for Wednesday, March 17, 2021
It’s been a long year, hasn’t it?
One year ago, all of our lives were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, and nothing has seemed normal since. Over 2.6 million people have died of this disease worldwide, including over 530,000 Americans, and countless others are still living with the after effects of having survived it.
Children have had to learn from home, families and friends have had to be separate from one another, businesses have shuttered, and millions have lost their jobs. The effects of this pandemic have been felt by everyone in our society. It has been a devastating year.
But it does seem as though there is a bit of light at the end of this tunnel. With infection rates dropping and vaccinations becoming easier to access, we can see a time in the not (hopefully) too distant future where things will return to something like normal. Not yet, but maybe soon.
When this disease is finally if not conquered then at least reduced to a manageable scale, I hope that we don’t forget the hard lessons that we’ve learned over the past year. I learned to bake bread and to appreciate puzzles like many of us, but I also learned the value of personal connection and how much I miss it in its absence.
I learned how deep a catalog of old TV shows you can find on Netflix, but also how much better board games my kids invented are than ones you can buy. I learned how much I hate Zoom meeting, but how much I can get done working from home.
I hope we’ve all learned lessons about compassion and community and protecting the most vulnerable members of our society. If we have, then we’ll emerge from this pandemic a stronger society than when we entered it.
Share your gratitude
To mark this sad anniversary, we’re focusing on gratitude. Please join us by going to our website at AltamontFreeLibrary.org and share on our digital Gratitude Wall. Let us know what you’ve been grateful for over the past year.
For my own part, I am grateful to have a job that I love, in a community that I adore, with a staff I respect. I am grateful to have colleagues with unflagging energy and creative solutions to problems that none of us ever expected to encounter when we decided to become librarians.
I am grateful to have a wonderful wife and two incredible, interesting children with whom I have loved being quarantined. And I am grateful for the endless support and encouragement we here at the library have gotten from all of you. Thank you all!