It's all about the vaccinations now. Tune into Governor Baker's weekly press briefings and he spends most of his time talking about how many people have been vaccinated and what groups are eligible. He lists what new sites have been opened--sometimes he's doing the press conference at one of them. He rattles off numbers as though we could actually absorb lists of six-digit figures read off in a rapid monotone, or make any sense of them. So far, 3.3 percent of Massachusetts residents have received the two doses of vaccine required for immunity from the virus (maybe). That's a very long way from the some eighty percent needed for so-called "herd immunity."

We're hearing many woeful stories from the trenches about the difficulties people are having even making an appointment. The closest vaccination sites to Winchendon are in Gardner, and after that, Leominster, so transportation, that constant trip-wire for low income residents here, is once again a barrier.

For reasons I don't quite understand, the state decided to offer vaccination appointments to otherwise non-eligible people who accompany seniors to their appointments. Is this an incentive to help seniors get to appointments, or a matter of, "you're here, may as well innoculate you, too?" I have no idea, but I could have predicted that in less than 24 hours, non-eligible people would be posting on Craigslist and other places offering to take seniors to their appointments, even offering to pay them. Suddenly, persons over 75 are in high demand.

I won't be eligible for a while, so I'm just waiting. The vaccinations don't change much, it seems; we're told we should go right on wearing our masks and social distancing afterwards, and all the restrictions are still in place. We have a long way to go before we start "the new normal."

But maybe we're already there.

I'm spending this weekend volunteering as a Zoom host for one of the science-fiction conventions that has gone all-virtual this year. I Zoom hosted for a convention last month and we must have done very well, because other conventions have been contacting us volunteers pleading for help with their event, too. Many of these events are in a tough dilemma: they signed contracts with their venues a year or more in advance, and they can't simply cancel without stiff penalties. They're run by non-profit fan groups, not wealthy corporations. Many of them are planning for both an in-person and a remote version and making the decision at the last moment.

I've been hosting Zoom meetings since long before COVID, but I never thought I'd go pro.

But this is our current normal, and some people say it may be the new normal--that even with vaccinations, we may never go back to large in-person gatherings as the default setting. I suppose there are both positive and negative aspects to that. I can attend conventions remotely that I never could afford to go to before, and a lot more of them, too. There are online social elements--chat rooms, Zoom breakout rooms, text streams, even the virtual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly last summer had its own phone app. I miss hanging out in the hospitality suite or the hotel lobby, going to parties, sitting up late in the hotel room with friends and a bottle of wine and smuggled-in snacks. But I can still see my friends.

I've been helping lead church services online, too. If only Zoom let us speak in unison and sing together--that is its major shortcoming. But if this "new normal" continues, Zoom, or someone, may solve that problem. Then we may have concerts, theatre performances, all kinds of things, all done online. We'll all be like the voice actors and singers who record Disney's animated films from little studio cubicles, vocalizing all alone, but hearing everyone else through our headsets.

Recreation aside, there's lots of talk about remote workers abandoning cities, because now they don't have to live in commuting distance of their jobs anymore. It's a wide open frontier, and with at least another year before the pandemic recedes, our new habits will get more and more settled, and we'll solve the glitches.

Life in Winchendon will still go on, whether we're driving to work or sitting at our computers. We'll still be shopping, taking walks, swimming, gardening, and hopefully, holding Solstice Fair and Fall Fest, concerts, yard sales, cookouts and community suppers. But how these might change, when they do start up again, no one yet knows.

In the meantime, hunker down, stay warm, and dream about warmer weather. It's only 37 days to the Spring Equinox! We don't have to get onto Zoom for that.

Inanna Arthen