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I have been thinking a lot about this hobby over the past nine months. The first partial shutdown in New Mexico started in March, right before an event held by the NPS. And following that, there were multiple federal and state events out here that were cancelled. The mainstream groups here have been on pause more or less this year. I spoke a bit with friends and family about what the future held, what plans we had and might have for 2021. I honestly do not think there will be events out here in 2021, but that led me to wonder if there will ever be a return to pre-COVID events.
When I did school visits and indoor outreach events, things were fine as long as I could avoid wiping out on tile floors. The severe dent in my tin cup is a constant reminder to mind where and how I walk. Those sorts of events will probably return in limited fashion. Those sorts of events are fun, but they are also easy to control.
The cancelled events that I really missed over the past nine months, I cannot control. And those events are the ones that are really unhealthy. The outdoor and/or overnight events at forts, parks, museums, and private land, with hundreds to thousands of visitors walking through each day. The events where many people get together and sleep under small shelter halves or in cramped Sibley tents or in unventilated barracks, where the hay and straw and leaves smell moldy and set off allergies, where the canvas never dried out properly from the last event, where that looks like that could be mouse droppings in the company gear, where people visit the nearest trees or port-a-potties without running water, where handwashing does not exist, where I get dirty looks from some fellow participants when they catch a glimpse of my hand sanitizer bottle in my pocket or haversack. Where one has to walk long distances to find running water, assuming the staff did not lock the restrooms to avoid stressing the septic tanks over the busy weekend. More to the point, I never see basic hygienic practices carried out. Food safety practices are minimal, even with park staff. Raw meat is handled, then cooked food is handled, but no handwashing is done in between, nor are surfaces washed down even with just water. There are always uncomfortable bowel movements afterwards, and far worse when That Guy (and you know who he is, he is everywhere) gets near the food. The NPS will not allow outsiders to bring in their own powder for events, so that means getting cartridges from a ranger and tearing them with my teeth, and hoping the person who did the cartridge rolling and handling had clean hands. It is frankly a miracle that hepatitis is not widespread in this hobby. It sometimes gets hard to reconcile the joy of teaching people about the past with the stress and anxiety from knowing one will get sick afterwards.
For my day job, I am a supervisor of a historic house museum. I have been thinking about our special events, on-site programming, and short-term exhibits. We are really going to change what we do when we reopen, but our changes will be simplifications of our old routines. I will not have school groups at the museum for a long time, if ever in the future. Cramming a significant number of students into small rooms is not healthy, and I had a nasty sinus infection after the last school group here. Large-scale/mass-gathering events are most likely out too, partly for staffing and budgetary reasons but partly because having hundreds of people in a small site is not healthy. For liability reasons, we were not doing events with any food beyond bakery snacks and cheap other finger foods that were purchased the day of the event, with all leftovers thrown out afterwards. There are a lot of things sites have to consider when it comes to liability and possible harm for visitors and volunteers. With a deadly virus spreading through the community, that makes liability concerns even more pressing. A close relative of mine is still trying to recover from COVID complications a month after finally testing negative. My local lodge lost two brothers to it so far, and a few others got sick from it. We might lose a third because of complications soon.
What happens after mass vaccination boils down to trust, for everything. Can I trust my coworkers and employees to follow safety practices when I am not looking? Can I trust friends to be vaccinated? Can I be certain that a shop I enter will be safe to enter, and is it worth the risk to spend money in that shop instead of buying online? The same goes for restaurants too. For some shops in town, that trust is gone completely and they have permanently lost me as a customer. Some businesses lost me because their employees did not wear masks. Some businesses lost me because they protested the masks, or violated state law by remaining open or by holding indoor dining service. Some businesses lost me because they repeatedly had employees getting sick with COVID, an indicator that the business does not follow safe practices. How can I be sure that a business will not have roaches in the kitchen or properly stored and cooked food, if they can't be bothered with giving cheap cloth masks to their employees?
The same concern applies to the forts. With one fort, I would have no qualms about returning for events. I dropped off sutler-row gear at a few forts this summer as I had better replacements. One fort had employees wearing masks inside and outside, and a volunteer in uniform was wandering around with a silk handkerchief as a mask; they were fine with me leaving the gear in the back of a fort pickup truck parked by the entrance. Another fort featured employees taking masks on and off depending on how close they were to visitors; they tried to get me to go inside the visitor center to drop off the gear. And not just for COVID, but for the flu, for colds, for the unnamed bugs that always travel through towns. Is it safe to handle and tear a cartridge rolled by a park ranger or someone in the group? Is it safe to eat food prepared by someone else? Is it safe to drill with others? Can I trust the park rangers and event hosts? I know I have looked at event sanitation issues from a volunteer perspective, and made judgment calls to either bail out or continue. But after a year of pandemic, of widespread deaths, I do not think I can continue to idly watch anymore. Will event hosts make policy and procedure changes, or will they simply try to resume the pre-pandemic ways? If forts and groups treat 2020 and 2021 as just bad memories to forget, and not as wake-up calls, should I have any future interactions with those forts and groups?
Or are these just the dreary thoughts of someone going through seasonal affective disorder?
When I did school visits and indoor outreach events, things were fine as long as I could avoid wiping out on tile floors. The severe dent in my tin cup is a constant reminder to mind where and how I walk. Those sorts of events will probably return in limited fashion. Those sorts of events are fun, but they are also easy to control.
The cancelled events that I really missed over the past nine months, I cannot control. And those events are the ones that are really unhealthy. The outdoor and/or overnight events at forts, parks, museums, and private land, with hundreds to thousands of visitors walking through each day. The events where many people get together and sleep under small shelter halves or in cramped Sibley tents or in unventilated barracks, where the hay and straw and leaves smell moldy and set off allergies, where the canvas never dried out properly from the last event, where that looks like that could be mouse droppings in the company gear, where people visit the nearest trees or port-a-potties without running water, where handwashing does not exist, where I get dirty looks from some fellow participants when they catch a glimpse of my hand sanitizer bottle in my pocket or haversack. Where one has to walk long distances to find running water, assuming the staff did not lock the restrooms to avoid stressing the septic tanks over the busy weekend. More to the point, I never see basic hygienic practices carried out. Food safety practices are minimal, even with park staff. Raw meat is handled, then cooked food is handled, but no handwashing is done in between, nor are surfaces washed down even with just water. There are always uncomfortable bowel movements afterwards, and far worse when That Guy (and you know who he is, he is everywhere) gets near the food. The NPS will not allow outsiders to bring in their own powder for events, so that means getting cartridges from a ranger and tearing them with my teeth, and hoping the person who did the cartridge rolling and handling had clean hands. It is frankly a miracle that hepatitis is not widespread in this hobby. It sometimes gets hard to reconcile the joy of teaching people about the past with the stress and anxiety from knowing one will get sick afterwards.
For my day job, I am a supervisor of a historic house museum. I have been thinking about our special events, on-site programming, and short-term exhibits. We are really going to change what we do when we reopen, but our changes will be simplifications of our old routines. I will not have school groups at the museum for a long time, if ever in the future. Cramming a significant number of students into small rooms is not healthy, and I had a nasty sinus infection after the last school group here. Large-scale/mass-gathering events are most likely out too, partly for staffing and budgetary reasons but partly because having hundreds of people in a small site is not healthy. For liability reasons, we were not doing events with any food beyond bakery snacks and cheap other finger foods that were purchased the day of the event, with all leftovers thrown out afterwards. There are a lot of things sites have to consider when it comes to liability and possible harm for visitors and volunteers. With a deadly virus spreading through the community, that makes liability concerns even more pressing. A close relative of mine is still trying to recover from COVID complications a month after finally testing negative. My local lodge lost two brothers to it so far, and a few others got sick from it. We might lose a third because of complications soon.
What happens after mass vaccination boils down to trust, for everything. Can I trust my coworkers and employees to follow safety practices when I am not looking? Can I trust friends to be vaccinated? Can I be certain that a shop I enter will be safe to enter, and is it worth the risk to spend money in that shop instead of buying online? The same goes for restaurants too. For some shops in town, that trust is gone completely and they have permanently lost me as a customer. Some businesses lost me because their employees did not wear masks. Some businesses lost me because they protested the masks, or violated state law by remaining open or by holding indoor dining service. Some businesses lost me because they repeatedly had employees getting sick with COVID, an indicator that the business does not follow safe practices. How can I be sure that a business will not have roaches in the kitchen or properly stored and cooked food, if they can't be bothered with giving cheap cloth masks to their employees?
The same concern applies to the forts. With one fort, I would have no qualms about returning for events. I dropped off sutler-row gear at a few forts this summer as I had better replacements. One fort had employees wearing masks inside and outside, and a volunteer in uniform was wandering around with a silk handkerchief as a mask; they were fine with me leaving the gear in the back of a fort pickup truck parked by the entrance. Another fort featured employees taking masks on and off depending on how close they were to visitors; they tried to get me to go inside the visitor center to drop off the gear. And not just for COVID, but for the flu, for colds, for the unnamed bugs that always travel through towns. Is it safe to handle and tear a cartridge rolled by a park ranger or someone in the group? Is it safe to eat food prepared by someone else? Is it safe to drill with others? Can I trust the park rangers and event hosts? I know I have looked at event sanitation issues from a volunteer perspective, and made judgment calls to either bail out or continue. But after a year of pandemic, of widespread deaths, I do not think I can continue to idly watch anymore. Will event hosts make policy and procedure changes, or will they simply try to resume the pre-pandemic ways? If forts and groups treat 2020 and 2021 as just bad memories to forget, and not as wake-up calls, should I have any future interactions with those forts and groups?
Or are these just the dreary thoughts of someone going through seasonal affective disorder?
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