Normally I would start this letter with some quip, or a story or something. But there’s not going to be a lot of that this year, mostly because there is just no witty way to encapsulate just everything that happened in 2022. I don’t think our family has seen more change in a single year in a long time, perhaps even ever. So what all went down in 2022?
If 2020 was the story of the plague, 2021 is the story of how we finally began to beat it back.
It would be easy to say it began at the end of 2020 when the first vaccines started to be available, but the truth is we were very fortunate that much of the ground work for the vaccines was done over the last two decades so we had a head start. And, as 2021 went on, vaccines for the deadly pandemic became more and more widely available. As I write this at the beginning of December I could walk in to any of a dozen places within 5 minutes of my house and get a shot. And while COVID is still with us – Delta variant rampaged much of the world in late 2021 and there is now talk of an even more infectious Omicron variant – the vaccines seem to be working well and things are looking much better than they were when I was writing at this time last year.
The plague diaries.
I remember reading on reddit late last year about a mysterious new virus that had emerged in Wuhan, China. Mostly because that happens with somewhat regularity and it is usually not a lot to worry about, I didn’t give it a lot of thought. So while I was writing last year’s newsletter, doctors in China were trying to get a grip on exactly what they were facing.
Well another year has come and gone. Here are some highlights for the Pecks in 2019.
All my life’s a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the nighttime
‘Til the daybreak comes around.
All my life’s a circle
But I can’t tell you why
Season’s spinning round again
The years keep rollin’ by.
So it has been awhile, hasn’t it?