Greetings!
Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!
Did you hear that!!?? 2020 is over!
While many of us suffered some heartbreaking losses, and are healing, we can also spend a little bit of time thinking about positive things that came from our experience with 2020.
Foremost among them for me is that we learned how to regularly connect electronically with friends and colleagues and loved ones who live far away. It is so easy to do that now, and we do, and it doesn’t consume any (well, at least not many) fossil fuels! Jody and I used to miss playing Euchre (we will teach you when we are able to, in-person…) with our good friends and family across the country. Now we play often with Zoom and a Euchre app, and it is fun! We have ongoing Marco Polos with the grandchildren, and Face Times. We learned that staying home, and reading, playing games, working on the house, and talking can be relaxing and nice. Being slow, once in a while. Enjoying Long Island, walking on West Meadow Beach, canoeing in Setauket Harbor, walking the dogs in Forsythe Meadow Park (try it!). We take comfort in the boundless joy of our dogs, who LOVE being in quarantine with us! We also expressed, in many ways, how much our family members mean to us. We did that in part sometimes by NOT seeing them as much, in person. That hurts, but they know we love them.
We have learned that instead of going into NYC for a meeting, we can do some of them remotely, and contribute to the goals of the CLCPA and reducing traffic congestion. And that we can even do a national meeting remotely. (Well, I don’t like this last part very much, Jody and I like reconnecting with old colleagues, and going to our favorite restaurants in S.F., like Scala’s. We did miss AGU in SF this year! But, we have great restaurants right here on Long Island, and there seems to be an endless supply of them!) Sometimes, although we are ALL tired of Zooming all day long, a Zoom meeting can be refreshing and less stressful than traveling to a meeting, which is a silver lining. No suitcase to unpack afterwards!
I also learned and thought about all the things I love about SoMAS. I really enjoy talking to students about what they are doing, what they are learning, adventures they are having, problems they encounter that hopefully we can help with; I like their energy and enthusiasm and passion for protecting planet Earth and all of its miraculous parts. We share this very important thing – we really care about taking care of nature, experiencing it, marveling at it. I really like going to seminars and seeing friends, and talking about their science and discovery and hard work. I like to learn about science that is very different from mine, but that has the same foundational connections. I like thinking about how they can do it even better, hopefully by collaborating with others at Stony Brook and SoMAS. I like listening to a great lecture, and watching students try to stump the professor, or challenge his/her assumptions about the world. I really like having faculty and staff meetings in Endeavour 120 where I can see my friends and colleagues and laugh with them. I like getting on a boat in Southampton and listening to Chris Paparo’s corny jokes. What’s better than a good corny joke? I like seeing undergraduate students doing research together in the worm lab, and learning how to develop and pursue a hypothesis. I love that SoMAS has been a great refuge from the stress of American politics. We could all do better than many of the folks in DC, couldn’t we? We would sit and listen, and respect each other, and identify compromise solutions to tough but important problems. I like who we are. I like that people enjoy working at SoMAS and don’t want to leave, they just want to make it as good as it can be.
You might notice that very many of these things require that we are together, in person, enjoying interacting with each other. So, until it is safe to be in person and really enjoy these things, we will take a deep breath, and keep our distance, for a little while longer, and keep doing the things that take us out of this pandemic – wear a mask, socially distance, wash your hands, take care of each other. Focus on our many blessings, and the positive aspects of being at home. We will get there. It is very exciting that whatever 2021 will bring, it will be better! We will make it that way, together. Peace to all of you.
Best Regards,
Shep
Paul Shepson
Dean, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
Director, Marine Sciences Research Center
