ROOTS & BRANCHES

Last week, my mask went back on.

Since my second vaccination in March and more so once various restrictions in my state eased, I had stopped wearing my mask unless an indoor place I was visiting required it.

And since I don’t like crowds in the best of circumstances—and get virtually all of my shopping done through online and delivery—this meant mostly a return to dining inside various places.

It also meant being able to get to a genealogical repository or two since so many of them have been reopening, many after hiatuses of more than a year.

Along with many others I was thinking we really had the COVID-19 pandemic licked.

Then the delta variant came along and disabused us of that notion.

I still remain an optimist that delta, while it will be intense and nasty for those who get it, is a temporary setback. But I have no idea what “epsilon” and later variants may hold in store for us.

The science for now tells me that as a vaccinated person, I’m still relatively unlikely to get more than mildly sick if I get infected. But it also tells me that I could sicken others—which is why I’ll be wearing the mask again as a matter of course indoors … and also limiting the number of places I go indoors as well as limiting my exposure to people, indoors or outdoors.

As of this point, I feel confident enough to make a visit soon to the Pennsylvania State Archives. They have some materials that I learned about during the pandemic and have been itching to see that may answer a thorny “why” question about one of my ancestors (and that’s all I’m going to say because I don’t want to jinx it!).

Outside of my genealogy life, I’ve been wanting to visit the museum of that late fantasy artist Frank Frazetta in northeastern Pennsylvania for many years. I’m going to get that done, masked and keeping my distance—from everything but the paintings!

And there’s a trip scheduled to Salt Lake City in early October, which seems so much longer than two months away. I’ll be watching case counts and talking to my many friends out there in advance to make sure I really want to step on a plane, which will be the first time in two years.

Those are some short-term things regarding my life in COVID. I still have “bucket list” items like returning to Germany, but they will wait until the truly post-COVID era emerges, and decision on travels in 2022 look like they’ll need to be made on a case-by-case basis.

In the meantime, we’ll keep Zoom as the lifeline it has become over the last year.