A bald-faced truth :)

Yesterday, Gov. Cuomo re-opened the State of New York based on the state's 70% vaccination rate,  removing all COVID-19 pandemic restrictions except for three:  face-masks are still required in health-care facilities, in schools, and on public transit.  Last night was the first time since April 2020 that I walked down the hall to the compactor room without wearing a face-mask.  It was a literal breath of fresh air.  :)

I may continue to err on the side of caution, though, when I'm in a public indoor space for more than a few minutes.  I might keep wearing a mask in the laundry room and when shopping, just to be on the safe side.

Other decisions await.  Should we continue to shop online for most of our vitamins and gluten-free goodies just because we can get them delivered to our door for free?  It's bad enough that we have to schlep to Manhattan or Eastern Queens to get kosher meat.  Why not make our lives easier when it comes to other foods that we can't get at the local supermarket?

Then, of course, there's our synagogue.  The president is calling board members to ask them when she can  schedule a meeting--we have to decide when we're going to start having services back in our building, among other things.  We're far too small a congregation (with rarely more than 15 attendees at Shabbat morning services) to be able to run hybrid/all-access services--we can't afford to pay a non-Jewish staff member to host a Zoom service on Shabbat for the few folks who'd still prefer to stay on Zoom.  That's a shame for our favorite 99-year-old, who's been a regular on Zoom, but probably won't be able to join us for many services next winter.  :(  And there's also the interesting question of what we're going to do about High Holiday services, given that we can't afford to hire a second cantor to lead some of the services.  We gave our cantor a break last year by scheduling a half-hour break between the various services on Yom Kippur day.  I'm not sure how well that would work in person.

Stay tuned.