Thanksgiving

 

December 7, 2020

Thanksgiving

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” — Voltaire

I must admit, it seemed like a difficult task, to find it in our hearts to give thanks this year, which has been and continues to be one of the worst years of our lives, but we were able to pull it off nonetheless. The Thanksgiving celebration was very different from any of our previous holidays in that rather than sharing it with friends and loved ones, we, like many people only had three people at our Thanksgiving table.

Our friend Gae joined us as Kathy set up a beautiful table outside in the yard, so that we could follow the CDC guidelines and maintain social distance while eating. We ordered a pre-cooked turkey meal from the grocery store to minimize the amount of time we had to spend in preparation, keeping it simple this year, but the feast was still fantastic and we really did enjoy the day. Our communications with family were all virtual as we spoke via facetime with my mother and sisters and Kathy’s brother, sister, aunt and father. Like much of what we have experienced this year it was strange.

Thanksgiving day was one of the few good days of the past few weeks as the Coronavirus pandemic continues to break heartbreaking new records as far as new cases and deaths almost every day. The current figures are just shocking as we have added more than a million new cases in a week. The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 14,756,998 with 282,310 deaths. Here in Monroe County the number of cases has grown to 3,515, 1,986 of those being in Key West and 28 deaths here locally.

Sadly the crisis hit home this week as our community suffered a huge loss and Kathy and I lost a friend when the former First Lady of Key West, Cheryl Cates succumbed to the Covid virus. She had been hospitalized along with her husband and former 5 term Key West mayor Craig Cates and a daughter in Miami. They continue to fight the virus and our thoughts and hopes are with them and all of their family and friends during this incredibly difficult time. Our community was shocked and saddened by Cheryl’s passing. She was one of the nicest, beautiful, smart, charming and generous people in our community and she represented us so well during all those years as first lady and more.

It has been a rough time as the numbers just keep growing as does the contentious fight between business owners who want to keep everything open and the local leadership who is trying the incredibly difficult job of balancing the needs of the economic health of the island with the actual health and well-being of our citizens. 

Just this week the mayor issued a very controversial emergency order implementing a 10 PM curfew every night over the upcoming New Year’s Eve weekend, basically eliminating any sort of celebration at midnight, angering much of the hospitality industry while earning a thumbs up from the majority of the rest of us citizens. It is an impossible, no win situation for the city leaders but hopefully they will begin to start looking out for the overall health and safety of our community.

One good thing that has come out of the Covid crisis is a newly released book that I was asked to participate in. “Isolated Island: The Key West Covid Spring of 2020” is a book of photography featuring photos from 27 local photographers that was created as a charity fundraiser for the local charity Sister Season which assists locals who have fallen on tough financial times. Of course due to Covid, we could not really have a release party as we might have liked, but all of us photographers gathered to sign a number of copies that will be auctioned off. It was great to be included with such a talented group and fun to get to meet some of them that I had not known previously as we gathered at the garden club to do our socially distanced signing.

With all the death and sadness, there have been a couple of bright spots this week. Our friend Brooke gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Joy in Cincinnati, a reason to have hope and good cheer. Also Kathy has spent the past week or so putting up the massive and impressive Christmas light display. Even though we opted not to enter the lights contest after last year’s fiasco, and there will certainly be less Conch trains driving by this year, it is one holiday tradition that Covid could not take from us.

 

https://www.sisterseason.com/