This is the weirdest holiday season ever for many of us, especially most of us who frequent the Grooves, so we acknowledged this communally and supportively in a well attended Groove. Many of us reported Zoom Christmas hangs with their families from their apartments. A couple of us traveled with our “pod” people for a quiet weekend in Vermont, chosen because it has among the country’s lowest COVID rates. One of us bounced down to his place in Florida and reported that it looked like it could be “any time” and someone asked, what 1950? But we knew what he meant, most people down there are acting as if everything is normal, no masks, eating indoors, enjoying crowded bars, and just ignoring that the pandemic exists. People from the North are traveling down to Florida en masse it seems, as well as out to vacation places that are not requiring quarantine, like Mexico, Costa Rica and many of the islands. We see their posts on Facebook and experience a mix of FOMO and fear as we try to maintain care in our low-COVID-rated neighborhoods. One of us was wearing a face shield in her home, self quarantining to protect her family because she had been exposed to a friend at an indoor tennis game who soon after reported coming down with it. Many people commented that the shields aren’t as good as the masks, but who knows? We expressed our quarantine fatigue and shared our favorite recent shows on the cable networks. We talked about how many people are now moving to Florida, including the Trump family . We talked about Heather Cox Richardson, the professor on Facebook who is generously and masterfully taking time to explain what the #$%@ is going on in our country, and in detailed historical context. We wondered how transgender has become normal and how kids are learning about it through cartoons and toys. And we sang another disjointed Zoom happy birthday song to a recently birthdayed Groover, which as one described was “dysphonia on top of dystopia.”
Tuesday, December 29, 2020 – Inter-Holiday Groove
