A small group of us started a team to walk the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Connecticut (virtually). We record and track our miles/steps we walked, ran, or biked each day. By the end of the first week, our team was hovering in 24th place out of 89 teams. Not too shabby!
In his March 19th online post, Thomas Pueyo coined the response to the coronavirus as hammer and a dance (see “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance”). We are in the middle of the hammer phase and planning for the slow dance phase at HMS Countway.
You might have seen Billy Baker’s article in the March 13, 2020 Boston Globe where he describes the quiet of Boston. The “worst rush hour traffic in America” became nothing. The author called this the “Great Pause.” Our entire campus is at a standstill.
The library staff are working remotely. We are caught in the middle of this thing. We are in the in-between. Normal isn’t normal anymore, whether we are on the front lines or waiting in our houses for the virus to peak and then flatten the curve.
I am writing to my staff today to provide a message of thanks in a period of unprecedented uncertainty and trepidation. The coronavirus is profoundly impacting all of our lives, changing how we live, work, and interact with each other.
As I sorted through boxes of ear, nose, and throat instruments, I was excited to discover a clear collection forming. There were numerous instruments that had been carefully tagged with a description of the instrument and the name “Dr. J. W. Farlow."
