Saying Goodbye to Summer 2021

I texted my friend the question I keep asking myself. “Ready for Fall”? Her answer sums up exactly how I feel “excited, scared, depressed, then excited again.” In other words, I am excited to return to the city and the beat of the street. I am scared of the masks, the ongoing pandemic, and the ugly realities covid has revealed. That makes me depressed, but I see so many opportunities, and that makes me excited again.

We are planning a trip. I am working on projects, I am excited to see the new gallery and museum shows, theater, many movies that actually look good, and new restaurants to try, but that covid cloud hangs over our heads that always seems to be there. The endless conversation, the anxiety that many feel, the destruction of many people’s lives, and then let’s not forget Texas.

The longer covid remains, and it could be quite a while, the more cracks in our country and around the globe are revealed. Frank Rich’s piece on 9/11 sums up many of the problems that began twenty years ago. As always, history is where we must go to see how we got here. It is also time for term limits, particularly on the Supreme Court, when we can live to be 100. Will we ever stop keeping poor people down so the cycle can never be broken? Texas abortion laws, and the ridiculous war on drugs. Can you imagine if we were all really created equal? What an incredible GNP we would have!

Back to Fall. I am tiptoeing in. Excited but with trepidation and hoping that the only thing that can come out of the last 18 months is innovation for great things ahead.