New Years Greetings from the Supniks

The year started out with preparations for celebrating the anniversary of the 19^th amendment in Carlisle. I joined neighbors making yellow rose pins and suffrage sashes (I'm on page 8 in the Carlisle Mosquito). We were invited to 2 weddings of friends so I had quilts to make. I didn't yet know how much quilting would help keep me sane for the rest of 2020.

I was really enjoying my days with all my grandsons every week. Then Covid arrived in March and we had to adjust. (Flexibility was never my greatest strength but being stubborn or persistent doesn't work this year.) Since Jonathan and Larissa are around the corner and they’ve kept Elijah (5) out of preschool, we’ve formed a Covid pod, share grocery shopping trips, and continue to see them weekly. When Gabe (9) and Ezra (6) went back to school in “hybrid” mode this fall, we’ve switched to getting together outdoors or by Skype.

My volunteering at the New England Quilt Museum resumed after the lockdown from March to July. We have fewer visitors and fewer volunteers but continue to have exhibitions and the largest, most accessible library of quilting books in the country.

Bob’s sister, Lee, continues to need my help with rides to doctors and coordinating her care. Her solitary lifestyle means she’s safe from Covid but more socially isolated than ever. Her medical team keeps changing as doctors are shuffled from one office to another. I don’t know how seniors without family assistance keep track of it all.

Bob and I kayaked on the lakes near Ben’s house in our Covid masks again all summer and appreciated the time in nature even more. Our vacation at Timberlock this summer was also a very welcome break from the real world. Some guests stayed home so there was room for social distancing but enough friends to make it fun. I had hoped to visit cousins and schoolmates in Rochester again in October but that, too, wasn’t possible.

Others say they hate Zoom but I'm grateful for all the things I didn't have to give up this year. My Jazzercise is easier at home with my own fan. We attend Shabbat services almost every week more easily than driving to Lexington. Meetings, concerts, and presentations are much more accessible and include friends and family who live far away.

Bob says: Like everyone else on the planet, I can't wait to see 2020 in the rear-view mirror. There's still a dark winter ahead, but better times are coming. I have to hold on to that.

The year started with a trip to Sanibel, Florida to spend a few days with Dave Waks and Sandy Teger. While there, I cleaned up their entire computing past, erasing or repairing 17 computers. At the end, Dave had a baker's dozen of old machines to take for donation or recycling, as well as a worklist of upgrades and modernization that he just finished over the recent holidays. After that, the year went downhill fast, and we're still not on the upslope.

At the end of January, my beloved middle sister, Gale, was stricken with a fatal infection that carried her off in a matter of days. I was driving hell-for-leather down to New Jersey to see her when Shari called to say that Gale had passed. When I finally found the right hospital, all that was left was to say Kaddish over her, with my grieving nieces, grand-nieces, and grand-nephew. My sister had beaten breast cancer and was planning for her future and then, suddenly, she was gone. She had influenced many lives, always for the better, including mine. And as her family and friends grieved and tried to process the loss, the pandemic locked us in, physically and mentally. I don't think I escaped until the summer lull, and strict controls in New York State, allowed Martha and I to take our annual vacation in the Adirondacks.

Even with the pandemic, I spent a lot of time helping seniors in Carlisle and Concord with their computer problems. Until the second surge this fall, the two towns were relatively unaffected, and I was able to visit seniors (in my mask and gloves) to provide on-site assistance. In the last two months, that has mostly shifted to telephone and email consultation, and I don't expect to resume house calls until I and my fellow seniors are vaccinated. The problems I addressed were quite interesting, running the gamut from simple hardware and software upgrades to full-scale malware remediation. I learned a lot about PC hardware and software, something about the weaknesses in service provider security, and more than I wanted to about Macs.

As a side effect of this work, I've been receiving more and more discarded computers to refurbish and give to refugees, non-profits, and others who need computers but can't afford them. When I'd visit a senior, I'd typically offer to take out the "electronic trash"; sometimes, that amounted to three or four discarded computers. Then, word began to spread, and people from all over town (and their friends in business) began bringing me computers to refurbish. Most of the time, I can clean them up, make necessary repairs, and give them a second life. I've worked on more than 80 this year, and only around 12 ended up getting recycled, due to age or irreversible damage. At the moment, they're hard to place, because the pandemic has caused many local social service non-profits to shut down.

My anime work has continued apace, with my team completing 32 projects this year. Resources continue to be tight, particularly Japanese to English translators, and I don't expect that to change. Three decades ago, ambitious college students studied Japanese and found that, beyond business opportunities, there was a bustling pop culture world of manga (comic books) and anime (cartoons) that they could enjoy as a hobby. These days, ambitious college students study Mandarin Chinese instead. Meanwhile, my anime collection continues to grow, and I've switched to Blu-ray ROM discs for storage, to restrain its physical size. As a result, I have 700 or 800 DVD ROMs that have been replaced and are taking up space on my shelves. If anyone would like a ready-made anime collection, just drop me a line and send a sturdy shipping box.

I'm doing less simulation work these days, but I still keep my hand in, mostly on the finer points of how hardware really works. If you'd like to know the gory details of how the SDS 940's IO channels worked, then I'm your guy. You sure? Yeah, I didn't think so.

One thing that hasn't changed is my enjoyment of Carlisle's outdoors through weekday walks. Whenever the weather permits, I'm out walking with a friend from DEC and his Golden Doodle Button. Button loves everything and everyone, and best of all, she's really a grand-dog. I get to play with her almost every day, and my friend has to take her home, get her to the vet and the groomer, pay the bills, and clean up the poop. Such a deal!

Ben says: For two decades, after repeated cajoling from my mother, either Lori or I have written a few lines summing up the past year, usually through the narrow lens of life milestones - changes in work, moving, marriage, kids, life. It always felt a little bit too intentional - sharing our lives digitally means sharing a curated experience. We don't have to include the setbacks, and online no one can see how you're really doing from the bags under your eyes.

This year isn't like the other ones. What can I possibly say about it? When someone asks how I am doing, my answer is: "It's 2020", which is to say, things are much more difficult than they have been in any year in the past, but we are doing okay, which is pretty good because this isn't a year where anything is easy.

This year I find myself saying, in so many situations, "both of these things can be true at the same time", and this is no exception. Both of these things are true at the same time: this has been a difficult year for everyone in my household, and our situation is one of the least difficult ones that anyone could face.

All of us are healthy, we work from home and can do so indefinitely, and our children do not have complex educational needs that have been disrupted by remote and hybrid school. We are not in financial distress, and we have not had to defer any major milestones in our lives. I am haunted by a feeling that, in a time of crisis, my country has asked so little of me.

I've had nights where I just cry. Where I am more exhausted than I have ever been in my life. Where I am just so tired of the world being broken, and I know that I will wake up in the morning and it will still be broken.

Everyone I talk to says they will be glad when 2020 is over, but we all know that January 1st isn't going to be different from December 31st. We will have to keep going, even when we are too tired to do so. We know things will get better, but we have miles to go first.

On January 1st the world won't be different, but we can be different - maybe just a little bit different. So if you are reading this, for 2021, I want to give you permission to not be okay. Permission to not be okay in public, not be okay on the internet, not be okay on curated social media profiles. Permission to say "this sucks and I wish it would stop." Permission to say "I'd rather stab myself than do another Zoom sedar", then do one anyway, because we have to keep going, even if we can't.

Until things are better, we will let the kids play multiplayer Minecraft with their friends and sit with them during remote school and try not to go too crazy bottled up in the house for the long New England winter. I hope you will be able to do the same, and look forward to the summer and the fall and a time when we can be together again.