Finding Joy

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Hoping this email finds you and your love ones well, both physically and emotionally.  Physically, we are all sheltering, masked and gloved, and pretty isolated.  Emotionally, I hope we are all connecting and finding fun and joy wherever we can.

For me, I have been connecting with my family, old colleagues and friends, many from Cornell,  with happy hours, coffees and wine tastings.  I know many of you have been as well.  Please share your encounters through our Class Facebook Group.   In the past few weeks over 50 classmates have joined this group.  Do so, if you haven’t.

One classmate, Randee Mia Berman, is bringing some joy to New Yorkers through her “Operation Workers CoviDance”.  Dancing masked and 6 feet apart with local grocers, delivery folks, drivers and others who work for us, Randee Mia brings her “contagious” happiness to those she meets on the streets.  You can’t see their smiles but you sure can feel their joy!  You can follow Randee Mia on Facebook and Twitter.  She is pictured here at our last Reunion.

Finding beauty and joy in nature is easy, especially during springtime.  Virtually visit Cornell’s Botanic Gardens  and see the gorgeous daffodils or join an Earth Day webinar on Global Climate Stories.  With the cleaner air, the blues are bluer and the greens are greener and all the colors are so much more vibrant.  So that’s a silver lining!

 

 

TV binging?  Is it “Tiger King”, “Ozark” or just the comfort of old shows for you?  All are fun but, if you haven’t seen “Some Good News with John Krasinski”, you must.  It is pure joy!  There’s no direct Cornell connection for this but his character Jim worked with the Cornell grad character Andy on “The Office.”

A Cornell connection we did find is Maria DeJoseph Van Kerkhove ’99, an infectious-disease epidemiologist and WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19.  She has become a public face for WHO, participating in video press conferences every week and answering journalists’ questions.  Here’s an interesting article on testing and tracing and getting to the answers that are needed.  Add Maria and Dr. Fauci to the ranks of Cornellians bringing facts to allay fears during this tough time.

Each of us is missing something right now but I hope we are each also finding something that brings joy to our lives.

Please be well!